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Control your mind and achieve your goals, By Alex Ogundadegbe

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Master a new skill in five steps!
Alex Ogundadegbe

Work to get control of your mind in order to be a great thinker. Your mind as a rational faculty is the advantage you have over other people. Occasionally your mind might wonder and that is good as long as you are doing a creative thought process. Most things in this world are determined by the thoughts of an individual, therefore you might say things are created twice: First in our minds when we begin to think about them, then in the physical world when we create them. Deep down, you already know the things you should be doing, but you do not do, because in many cases your body is controlling your mind.

The right order of things should be your mind controlling your body and not the other way around.  If we allow our body reign over our minds without restrictions, we shall witness endless suffering.  We will do things on a whim without proper rationale and justify it with our feelings which generally come from our body. The end result of such retrogressive processes is usually regrets over what we could have done or should have done. So, gain control of your mind!

If we allow our body reign over our minds without restrictions, we shall witness endless suffering.

As early as the 16th century, scholars had begun to realise the importance of man having control over his mind. In fact, long before then the ancient arts of self defence among the Japanese and Chinese centered on using the mind to gain control of the body in order to achieve great physical feats. Reverend Isaac Watts wrote a book titled “Improvement of the Mind” in 1741. In his treatise, Watts gave some hints about the learning process that could improve the mind: He said, “Learning has to be an active process. In other words, if you want to become great at something, consistently make sure you are practising hands on. A person aspiring to be a great writer apart from taking courses and training in writing, must write as much as possible so he begins to grasp the essence of the art. The same thing goes for a painter, a dancer, an actor, a doctor and even an engineer or a musician. The aspiring professional simply must focus on developing his mind on his area of interest and subject his body to control and keep at it till he attains mastery.

Watts also advised that we should recreate practical situations that force us to do what we wish to master as often as possible. So, if I want to be great musician, beyond practising other peoples’ songs and compositions I ought try my hand at composing my own too! For those who think they know because they have listened in class and have read notes he says: “Don’t just listen to lectures, take detailed notes and rewrite those notes in a way you can best possibly grasps what was being said!” Learning in today’s world has taken the descent of memorising without understanding. The end result is the person soon forgets what was memorized since it does not take a deeper root inside of him.

In a competitive, cut throat corporate world, the manager or executive who has been trained to think rationally will always have an edge over his colleagues and competitors. We must be able to anticipate scenarios and possibilities like the chess player who is planning an elaborate trap for his opponent’s pieces and is also expecting the potentialities of the opponent’s subterfuge. We must learn to forward think and use our thinking faculty to gain access to the abilities of friends and foes in the work environment and to meet our obligations and goals.

How do we gain access to the abilities of others? The first thing we need to do is read them!  Get a feel of how they see the world and understand their individuality. The aspect of this is we must all become students of human nature and this will enable us understand and accumulate the overall patterns of human behaviour which transcend us as individuals and this includes the darker aspects and qualities that we often disregard.

If you find yourself in an environment that you are not familiar with, the first thing you have to do in order to succeed is to understand the moods, nuances and the methods of operation. Who is in charge there? Who are the most influential people? What do I need to do or know to get along? You must test the ground and know where you can walk freely and where angels should fear to tread. Sometimes it helps to have fore knowledge of the environment by getting a trusted person or source of information before hand.

Benjamin Franklin a renowned American in the history of the clashes between America and England was picked as an ambassador to France and saddled with the duty of swaying the French monarchy to support the American cause. The Americans required arms and ammunition to fight their battles and Franklin had to convince the King of France to dip his hands in their treasury and give support for nothing in return.  The French were known for their carefree luxurious social life at the time: extravagant parties, conquests with courtesans, stage plays, musical concerts and poetry soirees. Franklin attended them all. He immersed himself in the French lavishness social circuit and returned to America with everything his government desired and much more! If he had been standoffish, self-righteous and smug, surely it would have been more difficult to achieve his goal?

Those people who seek to change deeply established norms and cultural traits in an environment in which they have just assumed access must tread carefully. In many cases, it pays to make use of those things you cannot alter. Everyone has the right to exist in accordance with his character as long as it is not harmful and detrimental. Instead of trying to alter that person or transform people outright, it is more practical and beneficial to permit them to carry on with caution.  See what you can grasp in their peculiarities and use to your benefit. If you are one of those people who always become indignant at peoples’ conduct, you are much like a person who found an immovable obstacle, smack in the middle of his path of progress. You can vent your anger and disapproval all you want, that will not remove the obstacle. What is critical is to find the way forward. Seek the critical path you must take to achieve your ultimate goal.

So, in your association with people whose habits and beliefs are different from yours, take a step backwards and ponder

An engineer was tasked with building a major road through a virgin forest. He had done his survey of the rather hilly land and submitted his estimates for the job to his principal. Now work had begun and he was working on budget and keeping to time but during the clearing of the work site he came across a huge boulder smack in the middle of the path that the road was planned to pass. He was in a dilemma. What should he do? On assessing the problem, he came up with three options: One: Get some dynamite and blow the boulder out of the path the road is going to take. Two: Build the road over the boulder using it as a veritable bridge for vehicles to pass. Three: Drill a hole through the boulder and make a tunnel out of it!  The challenge is often thrown open to scholars in Project Management classes bearing in mind the project has to go on with time and costs as a major consideration. The right answer is the one that best suits the goals and parameters of the project manager and his client. The problem takes us right to the heart of critical thinking for solving a problem.

It’s a rather naïve perspective to think that everyone we meet in life will dance to our tune and defer to our very demands so we can meet our goals. It makes more sense to try to read them and understand what they represent, who they are and what their goals are in the environment in which you find them. With that knowledge we can now fathom how to meet our own goals extracting and implementing the knowledge we have derived from our analysis as part of critical path to progress. This will not only enable us achieve our goals easily, it will also give us a sense of appreciating how the minds of other people work so that we can always find a way to get what we want out of them.

So, in your association with people whose habits and beliefs are different from yours, take a step backwards and ponder. Some of them may be frivolous, vindictive or rigid in their disposition. Your thoughts should be, “how do I use this to my benefit?” Fighting it will only lead to frustration. The path to win is to stoop so you can conquer.

*Ogundadegbe is a renowned management consultant. He trains managers and executives in the arts of Customer Service, Human Resources Management and Management strategy ([email protected]).

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