Dr. S SCHAKRABORTY

Autosuggestions has been used by people of diverse fields to harness the enormous untapped potentials of our brain and make reality the way we would like to have them. Our subconscious brain does not distinguish facts from fiction\difficult tasks and accepts whatever it is been told. Just like a obedient servant it goes on to make that command\suggestion to really happen in life. This practice has been followed since ages. Infact the mothers of great Spartan warriors when pregnant, used to continuously dream\self talk about what a great warrior boy she is to deliver through out pregnancy, aided by near continuous discussion about greatness of the unborn child. No wonder Spain has seen so many exemplary warriors in past.

So how it happens?

Of course there are rules for auto suggestions which is tried and tested. Basically it works under the premise that our subconscious mind is behind our every actions. It  has enourmous capacity and the most intelligent person might be using less than 30% of his actual potential. Any idea\thought has to pass through our rational conscious mind which filters it & depending upon one persons intelligence\past experience\ personality, that idea will reach our subconscious mind in a very distorted way and it might reject it as well, we somehow bypass the rational brain.

Rules of effective autosuggestion;

It works under the basic fact of that IMAGINATION IS MORE POWERFUL THAN WILL POWER.

AUTO SUGGESTIONS is anything  that you say to yourself regularly, that ultimately leads to action and corresponding outcome. For ex. If u constantly say in your mind my interview \exam  is going to be a mess or remain obsessed with excess body weight rather than visualizing yourself as a  lean person, our obedient subconscious mind just ensures that your predominant thought turns into results.

How autosuggestion works?

1)      It has to be clear and precise. For ex; if u say I am anti WAR instead of pro peace, it will take WAR as the main thing and make sure it happens. So it accepts only EMPHAZISED  part of your sentence.

2)      It has to be effortless;  just observe a person who is having difficulty sleeping and more he tries and says to himself I must sleep by now, more the sleep runs away from him. So will power doesn’t brings result here. If he just imagines that he is falling asleep, limbs getting heavy, eye lids heavier without  effort, sleep will come.

3)      It has to be consistent ; just few scattered days of repeating a good prayer with a eye on the girl next door, doesn’t  not help the  person to get the virtues of prayer.

4)      It has to be said with conviction and self belief;  you must be thoroughly convinced about the suggested matter without an iota of doubt.

5)      It has to be said when brain is most receptive like before going to bed & after waking up.

6)      If u can visualize your idea along with some special senses thrown in, it will be far more effective. For ex I always knew I am going to start the first heart care centre  islands right from my schooling days though our finances said otherwise as it is very capital and skill intensive.  Day in & day out I could see the heart care centre in front of my eyes , could smell the coffee brewing  the centre, which  I thought cardiologist drinks after every case. Of course it happened and yes coffee is always there.

 

7)      Never underestimate yourself just because the thing that you  want seems  BIG to you at the moment.   Just dream about it even in waking ours with unflinching faith and belief. Don’t allow your rational brain to give reasons to say why it can’t  happen.

8)      Train your imagination and not will power; with will power alone nobody has claimed greatness. Active imagination with sustained perseverance will bring desired results.Effort has to come to persue  the imagined idea . So for all the day dreamers with only imagination that too fleeting and always changing, and above it no action to execute it,  they won’t get any result.

I wish teachers instead of discouraging imaginations and out of the box thinking among students, just ensure that they stick to their imagination and pursue it relentlessly and not allow it to just fade away. Examples of some great imaginators;  Mark Zukerburg of facebook, Steve jobs of Apple, Biz stone of twitter  and more recently Elizabeth Holmes who started a company called Theranos which has already revolutionized blood testing. Her company does more than 500 different tests in a single drop of blood and the results made available in 4 hours.

THE BEST AUTOSUGGESTION

Given by Dr Emille Co’u in 1923 in a article that has been in continuous print more than a century now says;

DAY BY DAY IN EVERY RESPECT( MENTAL AND PHYSICAL) I AM GETTING BETTER AND BETTER.

Dr. S CHAKRABORTY
Entrepreneurs or self employed persons are slowly but surely getting the respect that they deserve for choosing the path less travelled and I am sure just like rest of India, islanders will also see young people with audacious ideas capturing the attention and imagination of the society. Yes it sounds glamorous and fun but the journey that every entrepreneur embarks on, is far from that. As an entrepreneur myself, I must confess the road to fame and success is tough with lots of insecurity and criticism thrown in, one has to brave the storm and move on. Here I would like to present some qualities that I feel , a entrepreneur must have to achieve, what he is set out for;
1) You must be emotionally invested in your project completely. You should have the passion and must feel strongly about it or else its very difficult to withstand the ups and down of any project. You will realize soon that money just like a drug, fails to give the kick that you always need to have sustained enthusiasm. Only innate interest and total emotional involvement will give you the endless supply of energy to carry on and on.
2) Don’t chase somebody else dream. Instead of having a herd mentality and just doing what everybody else are doing, have your own unique project and give it all you have got. Do you want to be a stinking rich but unhappy and unsatisfied person or a relatively well off person with a great sense of fulfillment because of a unique product?
3) Constraints inspires creativity. All success stories started from constraints right from Facebook, twitter, apple etc. So don’t give up your million dollar idea just because you don’t have much money. Persevere with it and things will happen.
4) Your first idea need not be always the best idea. So never mind about your previous failed ventures. Harness your experiences from that and start afresh. And yes you can always call yourself a serial entrepreneur rather than a person with past failures.
5) Get yourself a high altitude view of your project. Review it periodically so that mid course correction if needed, could be done and desired outcome could be manufactured. Never leave your project on auto pilot mode once it took off or else it will derail.
6) Completely immerse yourself in the project to the point of no return. Don’t have a escape plan or else 100% commitment and absolute creativity won’t come. On seeing a mightier and bigger enemy, a king once ordered to burn all its boat so that nobody including him can think of backtracking. Needless to say, he conquered.
7) To succeed spectacularly, you must be prepared to fail spectacularly as well. So practice DWAVANDWA, a Sanskrit word which means alike in success and failure. Can you conclude from Dhoni’s expression, whether he has lost or won? If you are very much pleased with success than failure will also hurt you more.
8) Every success story is backed up by a good team of committed workers with shared values and principles. Cultivate a culture of leadership in your organization so that you have more heads to get ideas from. Henry Ford of Ford motors once famously said ; take away all my factories and wealth but just give me my team. I can make all the factories again.
9) Get yourself a rhino skin. Criticism will come thick and fast more often than applause. So don’t lose sight of your end product, shrug off the flies and march on.
10) Past performance does not guarantee future results; Never mind your past success or reputation, every day you have got to crush your ego and start with a zero.
It must be a win win deal for you and for your service user or else it won’t stand the test of time. Never try to make a quick buck at somebody’s expense. You will face the same music, its just a matter of time.

Dr S CHAKRABORTY

We are given two ears and one mouth for a reason. God knew listening is twice as hard as speaking.

Right from birth to death, the first and most used skill is listening but we always take it for granted. We take coaching for speaking, stage mannerism, to be grammatically correct and all, with just one assumption that our audience is absolutely attentive and truly listening us. Is it so? With only 2% of people being taught listening as a skill, its too much of a ask with a mobile in hand.
So what exactly is true/emphatic listening?

So as the chinese symbol suggests, listening not only needs ears but also undivided attention along with connecting with the heart of speaker while making eye contact.
For most people listening means waiting for your turn to speak or preparing for your next question. Due to this 70% of all communication are misunderstood, misinterpreted, distorted or not heard at all.
True listening depends on three skills; attention , attitude and adjustment. It is a active process and one needs to train oneself. Our brain inherently thinks four time faster than we can speak. We speak at 200- 300 words per minute but can think at 1000 – 1200 words per minute. So it gives us enough free time as a listener, for the mind to wander and go away from the topic. By default our attention will be hard to focus because of this extra time. We need to use this time to listen emphatically by analyzing the content of talk, feelings of the speaker, looking for non verbal cues to know whether he means what he is saying, refrain ourself from completing the sentence of speaker and finally to summarize or reflect back what he said.
Why listening is important?
It is our primary communication activity. Our listening habits are not the result of training but rather due to the lack of it. It is the most important skill that a employer searches before hiring and a patient desperately seeks before consulting a doctor.
Why listening is hard?
We are always pre occupied with the past or future, may not like the speaker or his mannerism, our own anxiety/stress before coming to listen or often having a idea in mind what the person ‘ should do’, makes it hard to listen to that persons point of view.
Finally a good listener tries to understand thoroughly what the speaker is trying to say. In the end he may disagree sharply but before he disagrees, he wants to know exactly what it is, that he is disagreeing with.