Self Empowerment
by Anil Bhatnagar

Words are sound symbols that tend to represent standard concepts and images. In other words they are sounds with meanings. Every time you fail to follow through your words you deprive them of their meaning and reduce them to mere sounds. Unfortunately, this not only takes away power from your words but also from you, as your subconscious keeps getting evidence of their emptiness.

When you do what you say it strengthens your words with the power to manifest themselves. This means that the more you do what you say to yourself or to others, the more is the chance that what you say or intend will happen. So if you feel that you lack on this account, start on one simple thing and follow it through with the corresponding action. Do it for many days till it no longer remains a challenge for you to follow it through.

Pick up a slightly more difficult resolution and follow it through with the corresponding action. This way, go on empowering your words and yourself. When you say something to yourself or to others and keep your word every time, you will develop confidence in yourselves and you will start liking yourselves. With this shall begin and grow your romance with yourselves. From this romance will spring forth a burning desire to fulfil your dreams and to make a life not merely a living.

Also start replacing the use of words such as if, perhaps, may be, Ill try, probably, its likely with more definite words such as Ill do it, absolutely, definitely, certainly, positively etc. You will be surprised how this gives your intentions and words the power to get manifest. You will intend and as if by magic it will happen. Such is the power of words. Strong people, families, cultures, organizations and countries that display this empowerment of words leave others much behind on every front of life. If India is to become a superpower its people must start valuing their words. Why not begin with yourself and let yourself start using this power in order to stay on your path.

There are only two kinds of people in this world: the ones who only have excuses and others who are too strong-willed and successful to need them.

Heal your self-esteem
One reason why a common man has difficulty in believing that he deserves or can achieve what he wants to is that his self-esteem is usually damaged. And the good news is that it can be revived.

Every time we judge ourselves negatively and view every failure as a personal failure, we further damage our self-esteem.

Wise people instead of taking it as a personal failure, focus on discovering what went wrong that resulted in a failure. Every time we decide to learn from a failure instead of taking it personally, not only do we protect ourselves from further harm to our self-esteem, we also pave way for the future success.

Baby elephants are tied with a strong steel chain, which it ceaselessly attempts to break away from, but fails. The result? The elephant owners dont need to use the metallic chain to tie it any longer when it grows into a powerful adult. Why? Because as a result of the thousands of unsuccessful attempts it made as an infant elephant, it developed an unshakeable conviction about its inability to break away from whatever it is tied with.

The elephants conditioning or conviction did not come into being because of the metallic chain outside him, but because of an inner rope of belief that it built strand by strand with its own self-judgements in the wake of each unsuccessful attempt. Unfortunately we, as parents, let a similar process run through our own children as welland we are a party to it, even though only unknowingly.

A person with low self-esteem cannot think beyond mere survival. His ability to dream has already been forfeited by the society. And since he cannot dream, he doesnt feel challenged. In the absence of challenges, he cannot feel the need to mobilze his dormant inner resources, and undisturbed, the giant within remains comfortably asleep. It is a vicious circle.

In reply to a teachers advise, Hard work never kills, a student replied, But why take a chance? Jesus said, Knock at the door. It will be opened unto you. But we, like this student, ask ourselves, Why try, when I am not sure that it will.

Passion is your real wealth
The electric current flows in proportion to the potential difference, the life current flows in proportion to the intensity with which we feel the gap between where we are and where we can be, or between what we are doing and what we are capable of doing/contributing.

Beware: Achievements, success, and money can give you a lot to live with, but nothing to live for. And it is not what you live with, but what you live for, that gives you hope, joy, meaning, happiness and purpose. Riches are a poor excuse for purpose! If you have to pity, pity not the one without money but the one without the purpose and the passion.

Your index of wealth is not the balance in the bank but the passion you feel towards your purpose in your heart. Striking passion in your heart is akin to striking gold. The only fundamental wealth we have is that of passion. You can create anything with it and also lose anything without it. However, an insecure man feels too secure with his present to allow himself to try any experiments with it.

People say every cigarette reduces your life span by an hour. That could indeed be true, but more true is the fact that an hour spent doing something unwillingly and reluctantly has already subtracted an hour from your life. Life is not a collection of days you manage to breathe, but of todays lived passionately to the hilt--and your life is indeed only as long as the number of such todays.

People who lack passion, feel that if they could get this promotion, or this kind of a bank balance or get rid of this physical problem, they will really be happy. But the fact is that those whom they find extremely happy or lucky in life usually have similar problems, if not more serious ones.

The difference lies in the fact that the latter, unlike them, instead of getting bogged down by their problems may be having intense passion to resolve or overcome these. We human beings, like any piece of iron can propose to finish ourselves in two ways: we may rust ourselves out or we may simply wear ourselves out. Rust looks ugly; wearing out brings shine!

(The author is a corporate trainer, motivational guru, and an award winning author of four books: 'Success 24x7, 'Water the Roots: Leave the Leaves', 'The Little Book of Forgiveness' and 'Transform Your Life with Reiki' Anil has a regular feature on the India Times web site at http://spirituality.indiatimes.com Just type in Anil Bhatnagar in the search box and all of his articles will be listed.