Demonetization: A masterstroke or backfired decision

Recently Indian government announced the demonetization of the Rs 500 – Rs 1000 note. The decision was announced by Indian Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi through a special address to nation on 8^th Nov 2016. The reason was given by government is that this decision was taken to curb and destroy black money that is available with corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and business men and to destroy terror funding and to eliminate fake currencies exists in country. The decision was cheered by common people. All social media platforms like whatsapp, Facebook and twitter were stormed by messages related to demonetization. While honest people were celebrating, corrupt people who have black money were busy in hiding their black money. Government announced that people who have hard earned honest money in form of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency can go to bank after 2 days and get it exchanged with new notes.

 People of India celebrated it for two days and reached to bank on 11^th Nov to exchange the notes. Huge queue started to form in front of bank. Lines were so long that all people are not able to get cash from bank. ATMs all over to country started to dispense notes from 12^th Nov but they were also having long lines. People started to feel cash crunch. There was no enough cash available in the banks. Lines in front of bank and ATM started getting longer day by day and few people were able to get cash and that was too in form of Rs 2000 note which was again not able to utilize day to day use items like milk, vegetables etc. Despite of so many problems, common public of India were firmly standing with Prime Minister Modi and was supporting the decision. Situation started to get tough and media started to report lot of natural deaths occurred due to people standing in line and the corrupt people who lost money due to this move started to take benefit and started to spread the message that this decision was not carried out with proper planning and government must roll back the decisions. A section of politicians and media started to provoke the people who were standing in the line peacefully that due to government decision they are facing too many difficulties. IT Cell of both parties (Pro demonetization and anti-demonetization) took gear in hand on social media and social media was full of both types of messages.

Pro demonization team is presenting it as masterstroke by government and claiming that it will yield very fruitful result in future and presenting Prime Minister Modi as visionary leader who have guts to remove corruption from country on the other side anti demonetization team that mostly consist opposition political parties are presenting this decision as backfired decision. They are claiming that it will not help to curb corruption and it is only creating problems for common people. They believe that it will harm the current government and they will face huge damage in coming elections. Lot of articles published at various Medias for analyzing these issues and everyone presented their own point of views with facts and figure. In this article I will try to solve the same issues but with different approach. While most of the writers took economic models as the reference and presented their views, I will take neuroeconomics models and Neo Psychology to analyze mindset of common people and try to find out how they will perceive this decision of demonetization and whether they will support the government or penalize the government.

In the democracy, elections are the medium to express people opinion of government policies. Currently no elections are scheduled in this year. Nearest elections are scheduled in some states in March 2017 so the question is when people will go to cast their votes in March 2017 they will be positively influenced by this government decision or will be negatively influenced or will forget it completely

To understand the mindset of people we need to understand a very common term of psychology that is called Cognitive Dissonance.

Cognitive Dissonance simply means mental stress or discomfort due to deviation from existing situation, idea or belief. We human don’t like cognitive dissonance and always try to reduce it by avoiding idea or situation or by adopting it. The decision of demonetization put entire country in cognitive dissonance because everything was going on in routine was and suddenly that were forced to stand in bank ques. Though amount of dissonance was different on different people while media was evaluating entire India on similar value but effect of dissonance was different on different people. A person who is habitual of living luxurious life style will feel different dissonance by standing in bank line than a person who is habitual of hardships of life and here media made the mistake. They thought that rural people will be hardly effected by it but in different surveys it was found that despite of lot of hardship faced by rural people their dissonance was lower than anticipated value but despite of all these it can’t be denied that people are in cognitive dissonance. Theory of cognitive dissonance is founded on the assumption that individuals seek consistency between their expectations and their reality. Because of this, people engage in a process called "dissonance reduction" to bring their cognition and actions in line with one another. Psychologist Lion Festinger did lot of experiments and found out that dissonance may be due to three main reasons:

1.     Forced compliance behavior – when someone is forced to do publically that they don’t want to do then dissonance is created between their cognition (I don’t like to do it) and their behavior (I did it)

2.     Decision making – decisions always arouse dissonance

3.     Effort – when we made efforts for something and we didn’t get the result

Dissonance caused due to demonetization falls under the category of forced compliance behavior where people were forced to stand in long bank ques. Shopkeepers forced to do business digitally. Lot of daily wagers lost the job and forced to stay at home. So how do people react when they put in this situation and how their perception can be change? To understand this Festinger carried out a very interesting experiment that gives very interesting outcomes. Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) investigated if making people perform a dull task would create cognitive dissonance through forced compliance behavior.

In their laboratory experiment, they used 71 male students as participants to perform a series of dull tasks (such as turning pegs in a peg board for an hour). They were then paid either $1 or $20 to tell a waiting participant (a confederate) that the tasks were really interesting. Almost all of the participants agreed to walk into the waiting room and persuade the confederate that the boring experiment would be fun. When the participants were asked to evaluate the experiment, the participants who were paid only $1 rated the tedious task as more fun and enjoyable than the participants who were paid $20 to lie. Being paid only $1 is not sufficient incentive for lying and so those who were paid $1 experienced dissonance. They could only overcome that dissonance by coming to believe that the tasks really were interesting and enjoyable. Being paid $20 provides a reason for turning pegs and there is therefore no dissonance. Exactly same happened in India, despite of so much dissonance people are still trying to support government and it is due to they can only overcome dissonance by coming to believe that they are doing service to nation.

If government wants to reduce the dissonance of citizen than government should widely create a social propaganda that they are doing it for nation and in future they will get great results and government was very much successful in creating this perception. People might have chosen violence and vandalism to remove their dissonance but till now there is no such news that shows that people opted out other method to justify their belief and that was they convinced themselves that they are doing it service to nation and it’s for betterment of country.

Government’s entire focus should be on building the perception of positive self-esteem by the message of “service to nation” by using all platforms like electronic media and social media. As people opts this method to reduce their dissonance two psychological phenomena – choice support bias and confirmation bias come into play. Choice support bias is human tendency where we give more weightage to the attributes of option choose by us than the option rejected by us and confirmation bias is tendency to search, interpret, share the information in such a way that it supports their existing belief (I am doing service to nation). These two phenomena will further reinforce the new attitude of people after demonetization

How attitude will change with the time

To reduce the dissonance, initially people have opted out the belief that they are doing service to nation and it will bring better results in future but government should not take it casually since this behavior can change with the time. Belief can tackle the dissonance at certain level and if dissonance goes high then this belief can be changed and government should not forget that they are not working in ideal situation. There are opposition parties and a section of media who have been continuously trying to create the perception to present demonetization as fraud, unplanned and scam that will increase the dissonance level. To counter it government should work in both fronts.

1.     keep increasing the tolerance level of people by circulating the message about “service to nation”  

2.     Keep decreasing the dissonance level by distributing new cash through banks and ATMs. Open and promote cashless mediums for trading and daily purchases

Though despite of lot of efforts opposition parties are failed to create impact till now and the major reason is difference between approach of opposition parties and government. While government chose “Preaching approach” opposition parties choose “Fear approach”. Social psychological research has shown that fear does not always lead people toward rational behavior. it may instead trigger denial. Recent theories suggest that being confronted with the fact that you are not practicing what you (service to nation). Preach induces feelings of hypocrisy,(Army is serving the nation at border it’s our turn to serve the nation)  which is a form of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance has been shown to produce "self-persuasion," a powerful and relatively permanent form of persuasion. It is generally predicted that individuals will bias their attitudes on the experimental task in a positive direction so as to justify their action and same happened in the case of demonetization

What next after 31^st December

As far as the game of perception, government has won the first round of demonetization where they were successful to force people to buy its decision. Second phase of this move will start from next month since PM asked to give 50 days (till 31^st Dec) after that he promised to give the results. People are expecting that those people who looted them for 60 years will be caught and huge money will be recovered that will be used in various soap operas for poor and middle class people. Now it’s duty of government to give them the experience that was promised to them. This decision is masterstroke or backfire will entirely depend upon how government makes them feel after December and the success of entire mission depends upon it.

Opposition leader Mr Chidambaram said that people would never forget the pain that they felt in demonetization and would take the revenge in elections. I think Mr Chidambaram doesn’t know anything about human psychology. He must read the Fading Memory Affect and Recency bias. As par fading affect bias our brain forgets the memories related to pain more quickly than memories associated with pleasure and as per Recency bias we have tendency to recall last information in series very easily. So what matters is the final outcome of demonetization. That will be in the mind of a voter when they will go to cast their vote in 2019. So to make it masterstroke, government must work on following activities –

·        Widespread IT raids all over the India and news related to IT raids must be spread widely through all mediums. This type of news gives thrilling stimuli in the brain and remains in memory for long time.

·        Arrest of big fishes will reinforce the beliefs of people that move was with honest intentions. Let people sit in their rooms with cup of tea and take enjoy watching them going to Jail.

·        Government must use the black money collected through demonetization for the welfare of poor, middle class, nation building and army

If government is successful in managing all this then this demonetization will become masterstroke for government otherwise it will backfire and negatively affect the government.

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Science of Learning

You must have heard this old age saying that you can learn anything at any time and there is only one rule for it – Practice, Practice and Practice. In this article we will try to understand what goes in our brain and mind when we learn something new and how we can learn more quickly and efficiently by understanding our brain. We need conscious attempt to learn anything new in faster way. Our brain plays active role in learning the new technique and after lot of practice Mind take over it and from conscious activity it becomes automatic activity. But what changes occurs in our brain in initial learning and how mind carry on it automatically after learning? Lets talk about it.

Our brain and mind is the controller of our body. Our all senses of perception (eye, ears etc) and action (hand, lag etc) only follow what our brain ask them to do so. Our internal body functions are controlled by our mind. Just imagine a person who is learning cricket and ready to hit the ball. What happens in his mind when a ball is approaching her? His eyes capture the details of ball like line of ball and length of ball and send the details to brain. Brain analyzes the previously stored data and instructs hand to hit the ball with calculated speed and direction and all this happen in fraction of second. Same process happen in beginner and an expert then why a beginner misses the ball and expert is able to hit with perfect timing? The secret lies in a cell like structure that is called neurons. Neurons are signal careers in our body. When your eyes see the ball then information from eye to brain is transferred through neuron and when brain ask hand to hit the ball with a fixed speed and time that information from brain to hand is also transferred through neurons. There is a long pathway of neurons in our body. So the major difference between beginner and expert is in difference in their neural pathways. An expert has more efficient and strong neural pathway for that particular activity then a beginner who doesn’t have efficient neural pathway for that activity. You can compare neural highway with the expressways that carries signals in our body

Earlier it used to be believed that our brain structure (number of neurons, neural pathways) doesn’t change that means at early age we formed neural pathways in our body and those pathways live intact throughout the life but on later research it was find out that brain structure is keep changing. It means we keep producing new neurons and keep forming new neural highways in our body at all age. Whenever we learn something new some change occurs in our brain. Right now when you are reading this article and trying to grasp this phenomenon some change is happening in your brain. This phenomenon is called neuroplasticity. So can we say that these neural pathways in our body are the basis of skills? let’s talk about a very famous experiment.

London Taxi Driver’s brain experiment

To understand how do we learn and how do we become proficient in any activity we must know that how our brain functions. Neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire of University College London (U.C.L.) carried out a wonderful research on how our brain structure changes while we learn something new. London is a very big city that has thousands of streets and locations. A taxi driver must remember all the streets and important locations before getting license to drive in London for that they need to go to a rigorous 3-4 memorizing training course. To earn their licenses, cab drivers in training spend three to four years driving around the city on mopeds, memorizing a labyrinth of 25,000 streets within a 10-kilometer radius of Charing Cross train station, as well as thousands of tourist attractions and hot spots. "The Knowledge," as it is called, is unique to London taxi licensing and involves a series of grueling exams that only about 50 percent of hopefuls pass. Maguire and her U.C.L. colleague Katherine Woollett decided to follow a group of 79 aspiring taxi drivers for four years to measure the growth of their hippocampus (a part of brain that is responsible for memory) with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as they completed The Knowledge. For the sake of comparison, Maguire also measured brain growth in 31 people who did not drive taxis but were of similar age, education and intelligence as the taxi trainees. 

After 4 years of research, Maguire found some very interesting results that really changed the perception of world about brain. Maguire found that those drivers who cleared training hag got their hippocampus grown over time.  It seemed that the longer someone had been driving a taxi, the larger his hippocampus, as though the brain expanded to accommodate the cognitive demands of navigating London's streets. Now interesting question is why this hippocampus ballooning occurred in their brain?

It happened due to the neurons. Hippocampus neurons made more connections with other neurons. Their neural pathway developed more efficient with over the time so that they can keep large data of streets and send to brain more efficiently. One of very interesting finding was that those driver performed very well in spatial memory test but performed very poor in visual memory test that means for different tasks we have different pathways.

Rewiring the brain with learning - Neuroplasticity

Neurons are speeded all over in our body and transfer information from senses to brain to senses. Neurons can connect to each other to form neural networks. Neurons are the core components of the brain and spinal cord of the central nervous system. Those neurons that transfer information from senses to brain are called sensory neurons and the neurons that transfer information from brain to muscles are called motor neurons. Neuron transfer information to another neuron by making connection with another neuron by an electro chemical process and that connection is called synapses and series of those neurons are called neuron pathway and this entire process is called neurotransmission. The human brain has a huge number of neuron connections. We have around 10¹¹ (one hundred billion) neurons in our body and each neuron has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons. It has been estimated that the brain of a three-year-old child has about 10¹⁵ synapses (1 quadrillion). This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood. Estimates vary for an adult, ranging from 10¹⁴ to 5 x 10¹⁴ synapses (100 to 500 trillion). Earlier it used to be believed that production of neurons stopes with the age but in 1999 a researcher at the Salk Institute, San Diego discovered neuron production in a 72 year old person

Neuron and learning

Imagine universe on the canvas. There are billions of stars and you can connect any star to another star. Same happen in our body. Our body has billions of neurons and a neuron can make connection with 7000 other neurons so whenever we learn something new a neural connection is formed in our brain. When we repeat that activity that connection becomes strong and when we stop practice that connection gets weaker with time and that strong neural connections and pathway distinguishes an expert from beginner. So an expert musician have strong and well developed neural pathway then a beginner musician related to that activity but a beginner musician can become expert musician by practicing since with the practice his neural pathway will also get strong and efficient that’s why it is said that practice makes man perfect

Neural Pathway, Habit and Behavior

Why we keep doing some things without any conscious efforts because we are habitual to do so. Habits are defined as “behavior done with little or no conscious thought”. When you are expert in guitar you don’t need any conscious effort, you will play it like as you trained. If you are trained to play with straight bat in cricket you will play with straight bat habitually and secret of habit lies in neural pathways. Habit is nothing but well-travelled neural pathway where information flows smoothly. After lot of practice you developed a strong neural pathway in your brain and information always flow through that pathway and we call ourselves that we are habitual to do so. That’s why it is said that if we do some activity for 21 days or 66 days we become habitual of it. Basically a strong new neural pathway is formed in brain that time and as we leave that activity the connection gets weaker. If you are addicted to cigarette or foods it means you have created a strong neural pathway related to that activity and you have programed your mind that whenever information flows through this pathway special neurons in this pathway release the chemical dopamine. The release of dopamine gives you a little jolt of pleasure. These special neural pathways are called reward pathways. So if you want to change some habit then you need to weaker your existing pathway and need to develop new pathways that can be done by conscious attempt to learn new habit and avoid to old habit. After all we are the architect of our brain and we can change its wiring whenever we want.  

Learning just by thinking

Till now we learnt that we learn by practicing. When we do practice a new neural pathway created and with practice it gets strong now the next question is can we control this process that means can we create neural pathway in our brain without doing just by thinking. That means I just close my imagine and I just think that I am playing cricket but I will not go to ground so by merely only thinking can I develop neural pathway in my brain. Our mind is power house and controls all the internal activity of our body. As explained in previous chapters by controlling mind we can control our internal functions so by controlling my mind can I order my brain to create neurons and develop neural pathways. So can I learn something new just by controlling my mind and thinking about that activity?

A fantastic experiment was carried out at Harvard Medical School in 2007.Some volunteers in a lab were asked to learn and practice a five-finger piano exercise. A neuroscientist instructed half of the volunteers to play as fluidly as they could. The other half were instructed to merely think about practicing the piano, holding their hands still while playing the music in their heads. At the end of the five days, both groups underwent a transcranial-magnetic-stimulation test, which enabled scientists to infer the function of neurons.

The test results showed that in both groups, the stretch of motor cortex devoted to these finger movements took over surrounding areas. Practice rewires the brain. More startling, however, was that the same region of the brain had expanded in the volunteers who merely thought about playing in a discipline way that means mental training may have the power to change the physical structure of the brain and brain doesn't distinguish between a real or imagined exercise but it does not mean that you stop physical practice and focus only on mental training because it is very difficult to control the mind all the time and it’s have its own limitation. But this experiment proves the power of thought. By merely thinking we can create neural connections in our brain and it signifies the benefits of positive thinking. Every thought matters since every thought rewire your brain and this process keeps going on 24x7

So if you ever dreamed to learn something new and think that you have passed the age of learning and can’t learn now then it’s time to make list of all your desired skills that you wanted to learn and start practicing. You can learn anything at any age. So science of learning proves that there is only one golden rule to become master of anything and that is practice, practice and practice.

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Mind Programming - Techniques

In previous article we talked about what is mind programming and how it can make you super achiever. We also talked about best time for mind programming. In this article we will talk about some mind programming methods. As explained earlier in mind programming we actually don’t control mind but we convince the mind use its infinite power. We just convince our mind to do those things that we want by attaching pleasure with those actives and we attaché pain with those activities from which we want to get ride so here are some of the techniques to associate pain and pleasure with mind-

Creative Visualization

Visualization is an ability to form new images and sensations in the mind without perceiving through senses. Visualization is a very powerful technique to associate pain and pleasure with certain activities. In this technique you just need to mentally visualize the benefits you will get from doing certain things or pain that you will receive from certain things. Suppose you want to reduce your weight then just visualize yourself that you have reduced your weight and people are appreciating you. You are star in your circle. Close your eyes and visualize whatever benefits you will achieve from weight loosing. The mental images should be very clear. If you have planned to become a public speaker then see yourself delivering lectures, and listen the claps of audience. Just imagine people are appreciating you. Imagine how vividly your audience wants to talk to you. Make a beautiful mental movie. Associate as much as pleasure you can attach with your public speaking goal. If you want to quit smoking then you need to associate pain with cigarette so imagine that you are sleeping in a hospital suffering from cancer.

 Imagine your wife and your children are crying. Make the painful visualization. You have to attaché so much pain with cigarettes that after some time you will start to hate cigarettes. If you want to learn swimming then visualizes you are swimming and enjoying and attaché all the pleasure that you can imagine. If you want to learn driving then you visualize driving like a free bird. Visualize yourself the benefits you will receive from driving. You need to create the picture of everything that you will be doing after learning driving. So whatever you want to do in your life or whatever you want to stop doing in life you just need to visualize those things.

Try to involve as much as senses in your mental movie, try to listen the voice, try to smell, feel the touch. As much the mental movie and images will be clear as much the emotions will be associated with the object. There is no fix duration for this technique. You can do it as long as you start to feel enough liking for that object.

WRT Technique

WRT is a very simple technique and used in aid of visualization technique. I used this technique extensively whenever I started to do something new. WRT simply stands for Watch, Read, and Talk. It means whatever you want to learn or you want to do, you start to read about it, you start to watch videos about it and start to talk with people about it. Suppose your New Year goal is to improve relationship with your spouse then start reading articles about relationship, watch the videos on YouTube about happy relationship, talk with friends about relationships. If you want to learn music then read about the musical artists, about their life, watch the videos of musical artist performing, paste the posters and images in your room, talk with the people who have common interest. This technique works in same manner as visualization technique works. It associates lot of emotions with the object that you want to achieve. So if you want to achieve anything new in your life then-

Read about them, read about the people who have achieved those goals

Watch the videos, movies on You Tube. Watch the posters

Find the people with common interest. People who have achieved that goal that you want to achieve or those who wants to achieve same goal. Talk with them about your goals

Temptation Bundling

Temptation bundling is a simple way to boost your will power. There are lot of activities where visualization and WRT failed to associate emotions then this technique can be used. Once I set a target to run 3 kms every day. I visualized myself slim, fit and dynamic. I searched lot of motivational pics on Pintrest about running, talked with friend but despite all of these I was not able to run. My legs started to pain and I had to stop. Then an idea completely changed my mindset and I easily started to running lot more than what I planned. What was the idea? Due to my busy schedule I was not able to listen music which was one of my favorite pass time so I made a deal with myself that I will listen the music only when I would be running. I started to run with my iPod listening music. I just shifted my focus from running to listening music where already lot of emotions was attached. As long as I will run I will listen the music so more running means more music and I started to run a lot more than planned. 

This technique is called temptation bundling where you don’t associate pain or pleasure with the target activity and in place of that you combine the target activity with that activity where you already have lot of emotions associated like I combined my running (target activity) with music (already have associated lot of pleasure). Once I was in a city where I needed to travel one hour in train to reach my office. Despite my lot of efforts I was not able to associate pleasure with my journey and I wanted to avoid it but then I decided to read book in the train and suddenly I started to enjoy that one hour journey. Infect that one hour started to become best time of my day simply the magic of temptation bundling. So whatever you want to do in your life and you are finding it boring then just combine it with another activity that you are passionate to do. 

To find out how to combine it just take a paper and pen. Write down left side your target activities that you want to do and right side write down the activities that you are passionate to do and then try to bundle the left side activity with right side activity. Some of the temptation bundling examples:  

• Only listen to audiobooks or podcasts you love while exercising or driving
• Only use gardening in early morning
• Only get a pedicure while processing overdue work emails
• Only watch your favorite show while ironing or doing household work
• Only eat at your favorite restaurant when conducting your monthly meeting with a difficult colleague

Word and Metaphor

Can we program our mind by just changing the word and metaphors we use? Answer is yes. As explained the functioning of mind in the previous articles: the mysterious driver, secrets of subconscious mind and human behavior that response of mind is automatic whenever we send a information to mind to process, our subconscious mind automatically send the relevant thoughts to mind and we know that thinking is chain process that means one thought to second thought and the another similar thought and chain reaction goes on. So when you say:

I am not going to lose

Your subconscious mind automatically start to send thoughts related to lose and chain reaction starts all the similar thoughts related to lose starts to come in mind  but when you use this sentence:

I am going to win

Then your subconscious mind sends the thought related to win and similar thoughts started to come. The entire process can also be explained by a psychological phenomenon: Priming

Priming is a subconscious memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus influences the response of another stimulus and a chain reaction starts. Initial research on this subject showed that people were faster in deciding that a string of letter is a word when the word associatively followed an associatively or semantically related word. This is a very powerful technique and affects the mind instantly. All the great leaders and speakers know this technique very well and know how to control someone’s mind by using this technique. Just read these two sentences and observe your mental feeling, though both have similar meanings:

• Time Wasted is money down the drain
• Time well spent is an investment

I know you have much positive feeling in second statement. Positive words and metaphors associate positive feeling with the mind and motivate us to work it.

Let Go Method

Delhi is the most polluted city of the world and roads are always stuck in traffic jam. Driving in Delhi streets is nightmare and controlling mind is very difficult especially in bumper to bumper driving, lane jumping, dangerous overtaking and illegal parking leaves you highly frustrated. I invented this technique to keep my mind calm while driving on Delhi roads and later realized that this technique has wide application. All the techniques mentioned earlier are for those who knows what they want to achieve and has set their goals but sometimes our mind is so disturb that we are not able to set the goal. This technique is for those people who are under high stress or who are in depression or who are going through tough phase of life. 

This technique is not a complete mind programming technique but it is in between of mind programming and meditation. This is mix of lot of other techniques like meditation, pranayama, self-talk, arousal control, words and metaphor etc. The basic theme of this technique is just to realize that thoughts are just thoughts and we are not bound to follow the thoughts. This technique brings you out from the vicious circle of thoughts. The step by step process of this technique is explained below:

Step 1: Observe your thoughts. First of all you need to observe to your thoughts. My guru told me that mind is nothing but bundle of thoughts and mind is like monkey and keep jumping here and there but when you start to observe, it becomes still. So the same way you need to observe thoughts. Just observe don’t judge them whether they are positive or negative don’t think about it. You don’t need to struggle with them, don’t need to stop them or replace them. Just observe your thoughts without judging. Initially it may be difficult for you so if you find it difficult then do pranayama for some days and in pranayama session observe your breath. After some practice you will be master in observing your thought

Step 2: Disengage yourself from your thoughts: Now you can observe thought then next step is disengage yourself from the thought. You just need to accept that if your thought is “I am failure” or “My life is full of pain” is just a thought- an electrochemical signal. You are not bound to follow that thought. They are just past memories stored in your subconscious mind. You don’t need to take action on that thought. You are not thought. You are present moment. Experience openness, experience the present awareness you are different from thought. Just let go your thought.

Step 3: Self – talk. You have rejected the thought and now you need to give value to your life. You need to talk to yourself and tell what is important for you. You have to strongly put your values and now you are in state to order your mind. Tell your mind what is important and ask your mind to do so.

Step 4: Commitment. Now you have discovered what is important for you then next step is committing yourself. You have to commit yourself that you will now work on what is important for you and now you need to take action.

By practicing this technique you can change your long term behavior. When I am driving and I see people rash driving. I feel anger and frustration but then I start to observe my thoughts. My thoughts are usually: these are stupid, don’t give them side, overtake them, and feel angry. I don’t struggle with these just thoughts. I simply disengage myself from these thought. I don’t need to take action on these thoughts they are just electro chemical signals in my mind. I am a cool and calm guy I just need to keep calm and enjoy my music and by this I let go my negative thoughts and come out from the trap of these thoughts.

In this article I explained five mind programming techniques that I used extensively in my life. There must be lot of techniques but basic idea is to convince your mind and use the infinite power of mind. Now after reading these two articles you must have realized that why we often fail in our goals and the main reason is before implementing we fail to program our mind. So the revised steps to achieve the dreams are:

• Set the goal
• Make the plan
• Mind Programming
• Implement the plan

By using these techniques, I am sure you can convince your mind and can achieve your dreams. In my next article I will summarize the learnings of these two articles and will talk about mind set of winners. 

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Mind Programming - Introduction

"Nothing greatest can ever be achieved without controlling the mind"

We all set goals in life see dreams, and wish to achieve and make plan accordingly. We basically follow these steps-

• Set the goal
• Make the plan
• Implement the plan

Most of the plans are never implemented and we start to do procrastination and even if we start to implement then everything goes fine initially but after some time we start to deviate and finally completely leave the goal. Very few of us achieve their goals and rest of us changes the goal. 

Why some people achieve every success while most of the people fail? Why some people perform better in pressure situation while some people fail in pressure situation? Why some people have amazing persistence and determination while some keep doing procrastination? Why some people are so disciplined in their work and some are not? Why some high IQ people though who always performed well in academics fail to perform better in their career while some other who have average IQ performs better than those high IQ people in career?

The answer of above questions lies in stillness of mind. Achievers have better control over mind than non-achievers. As explained in previous articles we make decision by brain and mind. Sometimes our brain says differently and mind says differently and most of the time mind overtakes brain in decision making. Our 99% of decisions are made by mind. Though goal setting is part of brain but when we start execution, with the course of time mind overtakes brain. In that situation our brain asks us to work for goal but mind wants something else and between the battle of brain and mind if you have control on mind then your brain wins but if you don’t have control on mind then your mind wins and we deviate from goal.

So now it’s confirmed that what we do is actually what our mind asks us to do. Like our intellect says us to quit smoking but if our mind wants to smoke then we will smoke. If our brains says to avoid junk food but if our mind wants to eat junk food then we will eat junk food. If our brain asks us to go to sports ground and do workout but if our mind wants to enjoy the rest then we will do rest on sofa watching TV. If our brain says us to go in the shallow water but if our mind fear from water then we will not go into water so most of the time we do the things that our mind asks us to do. So if you want to do anything in your life that you want then it is must to control the mind.

How to Control the mind

Basically there are two methods for controlling the mind. One is direct and permanent method and other is indirect and temporary method. First one is long term but tough method while other one is short term but very easy method. These two methods can be explained by master - servant analogy. Suppose you are servant and you want to get work done by your master then what will you do? There are two methods- either you yourself become the boss and make him your servant or you manipulate your boss by flattering and tricks and get your work done. In manipulation also there are two ways- either you convince your boss to do the things that you want by telling him the benefits or you confuse him. By using this analogy we can deduce the two methods for controlling the mind are-

• Meditation
• Mind Manipulation

Meditation is a method by which you become boss of your mind. Your mind will do only what you will ask to do. It’s a direct and permanent method but its long term process. Complete method of meditation has been explained in three separate chapters. In this article we will use second method – Mind Manipulation. In mind manipulation method, in place of controlling the mind we try to convince to mind to do what we desire so that we can use the infinite power of mind. Mind manipulation also has two ways – Mind programming and Mind bluffing. In mind programming we manipulate our mind by visualizing the benefits of what we want to do while in mind bluffing we confuse mind by numbers so that mind could not take the decision and ask brain to assist. In this article we will talk about mind programming techniques

Mind Programming

The entire mind programming concept is based on the following property of mind –

Mind knows only two things- Pain and Pleasure. 

Mind will do only those things where it will find pleasure and mind will avoid those things where it will find pain.

This is one of the most important properties of mind. Our mind can’t think logically. Our mind doesn't know what is logically correct and what is logically wrong. Mind is emotional and knows only two things – Pain and Pleasure or sense gratifications. Our mind associate pleasure with some objects and activities and pain with some object and activities and mind asks us to do only those things where it already has associated pleasure and stops us from doing those things where it finds pain. Now just think about your all day activities and you will find out that most of the time you do only those activities where you find pleasure and you procrastinate those activity where you need to give up pleasure or where you find pain. Some people find pleasure in sitting on sofa, watching TV with some food for them going outside and mixing with people is painful while some people find pleasure with social circle they find painful in sitting alone in home at sofa. Associating pain and pleasure with object and activities is an automatic process and we do it by unconsciously but the good thing is we can control this process by our conscious attempts. That means we can associate pain with any activity and pleasure with any activity. By using this principal we can program our mind for the things that we want to do. 

The reason that we deviate from our goals is that we were not able to associate enough pleasure with those goals or if we want to leave something but still could not leave that because we were not able to associate enough pain with those activities. So the technique of mind programming says “Associate pleasure with those activities that you want to do, associate pain with those activates that you don’t want to do”. Since our actions decide our habits and our habits decide our personality so by using mind programming techniques you can change your personality too.

There are lot of techniques by which you can program your mind that means you can associate pleasure and pain. Now I will discuss about those techniques by which you can program your mind.

Best Time for Mind Programming

Best time for mind programming is when you are at cognitive ease state. As per famous psychologist Daniel Kahnemen the cognitive ease is the state where you are completely relaxed, when there is no threat, your brain is not active. This is the time when your brain doesn't interfere and you can easily program your mind. You can get this state by listening music, when you have heard some good news or when you are in feel good state. The first one hour just after waking up is the state when we all are cognitive ease state, especially in the early morning. So I will suggest you early morning time or whenever you are feeling good is the best time to program your mind. Pranayam (Deep breathing), brisk walk, yoga exercise, gardening, meditation also makes you relaxed and just after them is also good time for mind programming 

.............................to be continued 

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