Chapter 7:  Your 4 Wonderful Tools towards a Miraculous Life!

If you have come so far reading this book, it means you are still expecting a lot from life.

Yes, I guessed it right!  You are looking for a miraculous life.

1% progress daily means 30% improvement over a month and 365% improvement in a year.

So you can be three times better in every area of your life year after year, if you stick to your goal of daily 1% improvement.

In all the previous chapters, you have learned how the internal and external environments operate and how to master your mindset and daily routines to make your days most productive and rewarding.

Now let’s add some more solid fertilizer to your already fertile mindset and to get a healthier crop, which you would proudly term as the “Miraculous Life”.

Come On! Let’s put our foot strongly on the accelerator and learn the significant strategies and tactics to fasten the pace of mastering our days and create a Miraculous Life.

Here is the first one:

1. Mastermind:

The concept of masterminding was developed by Napoleon hill in his famous book “Think and Grow Rich”

Mastermind is nothing but joining hands and minds with people, who are like-minded, so that they all can learn from each other and also brainstorm the growth possibilities together. Mastermind group holds each other accountable for the deliverables expected from others.

Always remember, you are never ever alone on whatever journey you are on. Look at any area of your life, be it your career, health, relationship, social skills, adventure or any other thing, there will always be people in the same journey at three different levels:

1. You will always be able to find the people, who have progressed ahead of you, which you look forward to become.
2. There will be people, who are much behind you (feel grateful for your moving so ahead in life), who look forward to you to become like you (and you should help them).
3. Then there will be some men and women, who are almost on the similar level as you are, who can be your friends to share your journey and you can collaborate with them in your ventures.

So the mastermind connects the people at different level of their journey and there is something for everyone from each other success stories, failure and ongoing progress etc.

Mastermind is double edged sword.

1. On the one hand, it keeps you on the track towards your goals, by all motivation and support from the like minded people following similar path on the road of life.

1. On the other hand, it keeps you insulated from all the negative persons, negative circumstances in life. The company of like minded people, makes your consider your problem not as a problem, but as an opportunity to challenge yourself and emerge out as a winner.

This small world of yours a.k.a. “mastermind” is always there to support you and celebrate your small wins.

And just remember:  “Small wins lead to big victories”.

In whatever pursuit of life you are, you would need a mastermind group. You could be into any business, profession or trade OR you could be any professional i.e. doctor, engineer, accountant, lawyer, architect, etc. OR you could be a painter, writer, singer, dancer or pursuing any form of art OR you could be into any kind of product or services business. I would re-emphasise here, whosoever you are and whatsoever you do, the significance of masterminding can NEVER ever be under emphasized. 

Few other key benefits of masterminding are:

1. You get a support system, to help you keep stay longer in tough times, as there is a possibility that someone in the group may have already overcome such a situation.

1. The group is emotionally connected to each other as everyone is on the same journey towards that path and really understands the pain of suffering of such periods, so they care for each other.

1. There is great human connection- as human beings are not magnets. Here like attracts like (unlike magnet, where similar poles repel each other)

Unless you already hang around with like minded growth oriented people, you can easily find online forums as well as physical meet-up groups  in your areas. There is platform called www.meetup.com where you can easily locate the group of people meeting with a common objective like book lovers meeting, runners meet up, personal growth meet-up etc.

Mastermind is really very important to move towards a miraculous life, as you already remember by heart now:

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. ~ Jim Rohn

1. Experiment:

Another one of the best strategies towards achieving a miraculous life is to keep experimenting, small or big (with calculated risks) things in your life.

Our mind always craves for the novelty. And that is the only way to unleash the REAL power of the mind, which I will explain just in a minute.

Also, please realize that our mind does not want to engage in monotonous and mundane activities, so to overcome that it creates such neural path-waves in the brain, which makes our body perform such activities with very minimal brain power.

You can see plenty of examples in our routine to establish that. Few like brushing your tooth. Do you really need to think about opening the lid of tooth paste, then apply on the brush and then brush your teeth. No way! It all happens so automatically, then you have don’t realize some time that you have already brushed your teeth.

The neuroscience behind this is that mind is structured in such a way that it is not supposed to use its potential on things, which are repetitive in nature (see the science explained in next few paras).

And it might seem counter-intuitive, but here we can very well use this feature of mind to our advantage and craft our beautiful lives.

Yes, you got it right!

If the mind has the capability to convert everything in to a process, after some amount of practice, why don’t we use it to advance our lives to the fullest possibility.

So, the message is clear.  Try new and difficult things i.e. EXPERIMENT

Experimenting new and different things will serve the dual purpose for you:

1. One, you mind’s craving for novelty is addressed and it will stay engaged. Though the difficult part of your venture would require some training of mind and learning of new skill-set which can be achieved by convincing our mind through showing a strong “Why” (i.e. clear mission or goal).

1. Secondly, by doing the newer things more often, the pre-frontal cortex portion of our brain needs to invest lots of energy and willpower. But by practicing and doing over and over, your mind will transmit the learnt process at the sub-conscious level and then such activity happens in an auto-pilot mode i.e. it seems to happen effortlessly.  This way, you will increase your boundaries of your comfort zone with the tried and tested things.

So what could be those new things?

These could be very small like trying new restaurants every time or different menu, trying to choose a new path to go to your office, college or school or any other place.

It could be bigger things, like learning a new foreign language, like learning how to swim, like participating half- marathon to start with, or to develop your hobby, which you may have skipped for a long time due to your busy schedule etc.

Here is how we could make it easy and fun! 

As we all have realized that our mind anyways keeps thinking all the time (research shows that we think around 60000 thoughts every day, though more than 95% thoughts are repetitive only), so why not to play a trick with our mind. Why not to engage it with some new and different activity?

Push your boundaries daily.  Be little more uncomfortable daily by engaging in new activities in all areas of your life. Be it physically, mentally, emotionally, relationship, handling finances etc. Just to list down a few:

1. Do more and different exercise today, as compared to yesterday.
2. Stretch your mental capacity by overcoming resistance in any area of your life, you want to progress upon.
3. Daily get wise in choosing the right emotions. Choose not to get angry and avoid temptation to win a petty argument with others.
4. Talk to a stranger even at the cost being looked awkward, to overcome your fears.

Let’s put it this way. Be at the edge of your comfort zone always. This will ensure that your comfort zone gets enhanced over time and you would be in your comfort zone always (but enhanced one)

Test it out for couple of weeks doing some mini and mid-sized life experiments, which you have been consistently postponing from years.

Trust me! The difference with this exercise will be much visible to you in terms of your enhanced perspective and people will also start appreciating your approach of thinking.

––––––––

1. Be adventurous:

THE IDEA BEHIND PUTTING adventure, as a tool towards a miraculous life seems like somewhat similar to the experiment, but I have put it here with a wider perspective in mind.

While experiment is to test your boundaries and push them forward, the idea behind adventure is to take bigger leaps in such a way that it fills you up with adrenaline rush..

It generates such a great quantity of dopamine and other positive harmones in the brain, which gives you joy and happiness to the fullest in those moments. Once you taste those chemical rush in your brain, you cannot stop yourself, my friend! Then you go farther and farther to seek bigger and bolder adventures and keep increasing your potential.

It could be any adventure... could be bungee jumping, scuba diving or travelling to exotic places or you might be thinking of travelling to space (if your pocket allows). Every time you complete some adventure, it gives a sense of greater accomplishment to you.

But how getting into different adventures contributes to a grand life?

“I always think part of success is being able to replicate results, taking what is interesting or viable about yourself and seeing if you bring it into different situations with similar results” ~ Robert Downey, Jr.

The above quote is very apt to explain my point here:

If you succeed in one area of your life, the process to succeed in another area of your life is just to implement the similar principles, you learnt in one area of life towards the another aspects.

Take an example.

If you have every participated in any kind of physical outdoor sports, you must be knowing already the steps for preparation. Any sport or game requires few very important aspects to be taken care of i.e. physical stamina, mental energy, focus, consistent improvement etc. This requires a schedule, a habit to practice, a diet which boosts your energy and stamina, emotional strength to overcome the challenges or to overcome initial resistance.

Now tell me, how can any other goal in life be different from your goal in any sport?

Not at all!

It follows the similar strategies, steps and process with some variation here and there, depending upon the goal you choose.

Always striving for adventures in the life makes you live a very exciting life day by day.

“Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome”~ Arthur Ashe

After all, all the efforts you are putting in your day to day life to earn the money or taking such steps to earn the money is to have a joyful life.

But, why to defer living the game of life? You can have your cake and eat it too at the same time. So build your adventure muscle on a regular basis.

A big Mantra for anyone seeking adventure in life: Love your fears.

We all face fear of various types.  It could be fear of failure, fear of other person, fear of uncertainty, fear of what other will think and the list can go on and on and vary from person to person.  But, these fears are the real gifts to mankind.

How?

In fact fear comes with a deeper message about the very thing, which needs to be addressed at any particular point of time in your life.

I remember watching a Hindi movie “Jab We Met” (meaning ‘when we met earlier’), in which the Hero was in a state of running away from life problems until he meets the charismatic and lively heroine. The big change, which came in his life was that he started taking all actions in his life basis what he most feared about. And it was a big “aha” moment for him, when he realized that those things were less than half as bad or difficult, as he used to think.

The moral is that the fear beacons towards those very areas of your life, which need to be paid attention to and addressed.

To make your choice a bit sensible, while taking on different adventures, despite fear, there is a very quick decision guide.

Always divide your different fears in two categories, basis your judgement of the outcome.

1. Low impact or with reversible outcome
2. High impact or Irreversible outcome.

If the outcome is something, which is of least impact, then don’t waste your mental energy in resisting to take action. Go for it. Remember, it will develop your brain and create new neural pathways, to keep taking risks in life to move ahead.

Further, in case of high impact decision or which are very difficult to reverse, one may need to be bit more thoughtful, considering the overall situation including its impact on other people’s lives.

The good part is that, if you take enough number of low impact decisions and go for the fear, the mind will develop very shortly to take up higher level of fears and act upon it.

Therefore, we can easily refer fear as gift, as this gives us the indication of where we should go, but the message needs to be interpreted with an open perspective as above.

1. Goals are goldmine:

“You need a plan to build a house. To build a life, it is even more important to have a plan or goal.” – Zig Ziglar

No one can ever undermine the importance of goals setting to achieve one’s dreams. But goals require sacrifices in the present moment and delay in instant gratification, which leads towards a better future.

A lot has been said about goals already, so it does not need much theory or explanation here. The most important requirement is that the goals should be SMART goals i.e.

-  Specific

-  Measurable

-  Attainable

-  Relevant

-  Time-bound

There are multifarious reasons of why you must have goals, few are listed below.

-  Goals help you to take control of your life.

-  Goals propel you forward towards your next best version.

-  Goals create laser sharp focus on what you want to achieve, so your actions are well directed.

-  Goals create accountability for your action or non-action.

-  Goals keep you motivated in adverse situations.

-  Goals tell you what your truly want from your life.

-  Goals help you live your life to the fullest.

Therefore goals give you a bigger purpose towards life. It makes you feel alive. It fulfills the ultimate human desires of growth. If you are able to feel a desire of growth on a daily basis, then you are in the real game for a mega living. With so much clarity and focus towards one’s goal and consistent and massive actions in right direction, one will always feel a sense of fulfillment. 

As you would have seen, the sunlight passing through a lens with a focus on one point on a piece of paper has the power to put fire in paper. Similarly, if you are laser focused on your goals, you will start getting closer to your goal on fast track basis. Someone has rightly used “FOCUS” as an acronym, which is:

-  Follow

-  One

-  Course

-  Until

-  Success

Also, as you have heard “fortune favours the brave”, the life will unfold in such way, you wouldn’t have ever imagined.

Therefore, one must have stated goals in all major areas of one’s life namely:

-  Health

-  Relationship

-  Financial

-  Professional

-  Adventure

-  Contribution to the world.

It is important to have stated goals in all important areas of our lives, so that we don’t keep running away fast only to attain one goal and miss out a lot on other areas of your life.

Moreover, in your journey towards chosen goals, the willpower you develop, the resistance you overcome, the confidence you build in conquering your fears, will make you an altogether a different human being.

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals”~ Henry David Thoreau