The faculties of human mind closely resemble those of an architect and a magician. Though the mind has the potential to act like a highly efficient architect as well as a mesmerising magician, utilisation or optimisation of these dual capabilities of the mind is a matter of choice for the individual. Herein lies the role of the mind in designing the individual’s destiny.
There is a general misconception that the relation between mind and destiny is a theoretical or a philosophical or an abstract concept. The mind destiny relation is a real, concrete thing, as demonstrated by the actual life of people who made use of the potential of their mind to shape their destiny.
There is a direct connection between mind and destiny, even on a daily basis. It is a simple thing to see and understand. If you wake up irritated, in a bad mood, it means you are seeing yourself as an irritated being.You may even think and sometimes say to yourself, “I’m really irritated today.” This is some kind of identifying with negativism. It means your self-identity becomes negative. What is the result? You filter the world and the day’s happenings through your negative filter and the world actually looks like an irritable place. As a result, you think negative thoughts, generate a negative attitude and give negative energy to others. They in turn will return the same negative energy, which you are sending to them and perhaps avoid you altogether. So your destiny of the day becomes unpalatable.
Often we hear some people say: “It is all destiny. If I am destined to be like this or like that, why then should I exert? It is my destiny only.” But the point is that this belief will bring inertia and result in inaction and stagnation. An intelligent man has no difficulty in understanding that an individual makes his own destiny from within by his thoughts and actions and that one’s destiny is mostly one’s own creation.
Ian Robertson in his book ‘Mind Sculpture ’explains how our brain is changed physically by the conversations we have, the events we witness and the love we receive, all through our life, not just when we are an infant. This process occurs despite the individual’s genetic constitution and constantly shapes and reshapes us. Who and what we are is being sculpted throughout our lifetime, second by second, by our interactions with the world, by our relationships with other people, by our mental dispositions, by our decisions, by our actions. Our brains have a great untapped potential for superb achievement from childhood to death, and we are largely in command of it. This is the factor behind all great scientific inventions, all historic achievements. But, for the brain to use its potential to the fullest extent, the mind has to be tuned and trained properly.
In their book ‘Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude, ’ Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone point out that our mind has a secret invisible talisman. On one side is inscribed the letters PMA (positive mental attitude) and on the other the letters NMA (negative mental attitude). A positive attitude will naturally attract the good and the beautiful. The negative attitude will rob you of all that makes life worth living.Your success, health, happiness, and wealth depend on how you make up your mind! That is, your mind is the creator of your destiny.
We would all have come across people who said : “On the spur of the moment, I took a wrong decision without applying my mind. That changed my destiny for the worse.” Maybe we ourselves would have told this to others. If we think sensibly, this is an unconditional admission that because the mind was not put into proper use, a decision was taken, which was proved wrong by later events. Here the question is whether the bad consequences happened because of destiny. Was there a way to prevent the bad consequences from happening? Yes, there was. The mind should have been put to proper use, which means that the pros and cons of the decision should have been weighed. Then where is the question of destiny? For not using the mind, destiny gets the blame. There could be an extended argument that the reason why the mind was not applied while taking the wrong decision was because of destiny. This is a lopsided view point. This is a very common phenomenon which many of us would have experienced in our life.
What we call destiny is indeed the net effect of all our actions, which are the ultimate result of our thoughts, our thinking process. Mind harbours thoughts. Even when the mind is not applied, the thinking process does not stop. The thinking may not perhaps be on the proper lines. The thoughts which the mind generates and harbours shape the mental disposition, attitude, outlook, which in turn spurs actions. Actions result in actual experiences, the net effect of which is what we call as destiny. This is the mind destiny connection. Herein lies the unlimited scope and potential the mind has in shaping an individual’s destiny. The mind destiny connection is a strong bond.
Mahatma Gandhi has observed thus: ‘A man is but the product of his thoughts – what he thinks, he becomes.’ Thoughts which are only by-products of our mind are very powerful, and science is doing exciting experiments with the power of thought.The Silicon Valley Company Neurosky and other companies are doing intensive research into the field of mind and the power of thought.
Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words, they become actions.
Watch your actions, they become habits.
Watch your habits, they become your character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.
