Triple Filter Test of Socrates

Socrates was reputed to hold knowledge in high esteem in ancient Greece.
One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said, "Do you know what I just heard about your friend?"
Hold on a minute," Socrates replied. "Before telling me anything, I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test."

Triple filter?"
That's right," Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you're going to say. That's why I call it the triple filter test.

1.The first filter is TRUTH. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"

No," the man said, "actually I just heard about it and..."

2.All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of GOODNESS. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?"

No, on the contrary..."

3.So," Socrates continued, "you want to tell me something bad about him, but you're not certain it's true. You may still pass the test though, because there's one filter left: the filter of USEFULNESS. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?"

No, not really."

Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?"

What does being proactive mean?

As I am working on my own proactive habit, I would like to shed some lights on what proactive approach towards life could bring to you. In the book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Stephen Covey talks about the habit of “being proactive”. Being proactive is the difference between responding and reacting to life situations. Even though, we forget to exercise it, what gives different people different outlooks towards life is the freedom to choose the response to a circumstance. Victor Frankl, in his book, calls this “the last of human freedoms”. Between what happened to him when he was at the Nazi concentration camp and how he responded, he had that freedom to choose that response and nobody could take that away from him.

Proactivity means more than merely taking initiative. It means that instead of making our lives the result of conditions and conditioning, we can be responsible for our own lives and take charge of our conditioning. Disraeli said it clearly when he said “We are not the creature of circumstances, we are creator of circumstances”. That means instead of empowering the circumstances and let them control our lives, we could use our ability to take charge and create the circumstances that we want to see. Our basic nature is to act and not to be acted upon. Have you seen anybody being down in the mouth because somebody was rude and impolite to them?  Clearly, when that happens we are taking the reactive approach by empowering other people’s weakness to control our emotions. Of course, proactive people also face that, but they are driven by values and principles rather than feelings and circumstances. In Roosevelt’s words, “No one can hurt you without your consent”.  When you realize the fact that you yourself are in control of your emotions and not somebody else, then you can make the conscious choice to stay positive in the most negative circumstances. No thief can steal that freedom from you.

Moreover, proactive people work on their “circle of influence” instead of working on their “circle of concern”. Circle of concern are the things that you don’t have control over. It’s pretty common to see people waste time talking about things which they cannot really do much about like past mistakes, another person’s behavior, national debt, international politics and other problems outside. Whereas proactive people focus on “circle of influence” which are the things you can do something about. The more you work on your “circle of influence”, the more it expands and you become more effective.

Now where do you start on the road of being Proactive? I believe the first step of being proactive is to take personal responsibility for where you are in life today. You are in life today exactly where you are supposed to be because of the choices that you have made along the way which shaped your circumstances. If you think the circumstances around you have to change for you to be better, then you will wait till eternity because you and your choices created those circumstances and brought you where you are. I understand it is very hard to swallow that pill but until you can honestly say “I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday,” you cannot say, “I choose otherwise”. This is what is referred to as “Locust of Control” by Brian Tracy. When people have “external locust of control,” they have outside-in approach which means the conditions outside control their life. On the other hand, if people have “inside-out” approach towards life where they say anything that happens in my life is because of the choices I make and by making better choices I can change my life, this is called “internal locust of control”. Being proactive means creating that internal locust of control and understanding that unless you change the cause, you can’t change the effect, unless you change the object in-front of the mirror, you can’t change the reflection. Anytime we think that the problem is “out there”, that thinking is a problem because it suggests that things have to change before we can change. Instead, we can use our gift to analyze our own thought process and correct them.

Like Covey said” Knowing that we are responsible- “response-able”- is the fundamental leap towards making your life effective. Your ability to “think about what you think about”, if you use it, is the tool for creating proactive habits in your life.

The Power of Faith

There might have been times in your life when you did not believe in yourself of you thought you lacked something other successful people had. You just have to remember that you have unlimited power within yourself and all you need is to believe and call upon them and you'll perform miracles. Any successful person you see have gone through the phase.Someone, something, gave them a new belief in themselves and a new faith in their power to win—and they leaped ahead and wrested success from seemingly certain defeat.

There is a story of a country boy who was afraid of his own shadow  and used to be made fun of and harassed. Every boy in the countryside bedeviled him. Until one day his grandmother gave him a talisman that she assured him his grandfather had carried through the Civil War and which, so she said, had the property of making its owner invincible. Nothing could hurt him, she told him, while he wore this talisman. Nothing could stand up against him. He believed her. And the next time the bully of the town started to cuff him around, he wiped up the earth with him. And that was only the start. Before the year was out,  he had made a reputation as the most daring soul in the community.( R. Collier)

Then, when his grandmother felt that he was thoroughly cured, she told him the truth—that the "talisman" was merely a piece of old junk she'd picked up by the roadside—that she knew all he needed was faith in himself, a belief that he could do these things. He had it inside of him all this time but he needed somebody to call upon those powers and empower him by revealing him his own riches. On the same note, there are times in our lives when we need somebody (like the boy's grandmother) to believe in us and remind us of our unlimited potential. And if you learn from that, you could do the same to another human being who's struggling in the trenches and give a ray of hope just like the movie " Pay it Forward".

Thank You

11/03/11

How a Child Motivated his Father.

A boy two-and-one-half years of age was walking with his father after a very heavy Christmas Day dinner. When they had walked about a block and a half, the youngster stopped, looked up at his father with a smile, and said: "Daddy… " then hesitated. His father responded, "Yes?" The boy paused for a second or two and continued, "If you say please, I'll let you carry me," Now, who could resist this type of motivation?

Throughout life you play dual parts in which you motivate others and they motivate you. Learn and apply the art of motivation with Positive Mental Attitude.
Even a newborn baby motivates his parents to action.

© W.Clement Stone, Success with a Positive Mental Attitude.

How do you define Success?

By nature, man's mind is designed to succeed. We are by far the most intelligent beings that ever existed. Our mental capacity is far more superior to any super computer that man has ever created. But why is it that so many people still seem to be wandering in the wilderness looking for success and not knowing where to get it. How do you define success and what could you possibly do to be successful?

Dr. Maxwell Maltz in his book "Psycho-cybernetics" explains that human mind works under the psycho-cybernetic mechanism. Let me take some time to explain what a cybernetic mechanism is. Imagine two ships in a harbor, the 1st ship has experienced sailors, maps and all the equipments they need and most importantly a destination. 9,999 out of 10,000 times, the ship reaches its destination because there are people guiding the ship and they know where they are going. Now let's take another ship, give them no crew, no captains, no destination, just start the engine and let it go, i am sure you agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will probably end up in a deserted beach or derelict.(Earl Nightingale, The Strangest Secret)In a similar fashion, humans need to know where they are going and they should constantly feed their mind on a daily basis the thoughts of their specific goals. If you do this, your mind will automatically go to work for you without your conscious mind even knowing about it. And this is the cybernetic mechanism our mind works under which deliberately leads us towards the path to success.

Success is nothing but the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. It is an active pursuit of a predetermined goal. A person who has defined his major purpose in life and is doing something about it every single day is successful. Success is a man who teaches at a school because that's what he wants to do and is improving on teaching skills every day, success is a woman who is a good mother to her kids because that is what her life's aim is, success is a salesman who is looking for clients to provides product or services to because that is what his predetermined goal. Thus, you could also be instantaneously successful, if you decide on a goal and at this very moment, start working towards it. Instead of competing, think of what you can create and develop that to a certain level.

So why is everyone not successful if it is that simple? Because only 1 out of 100 people actually take the time to do this.A person who is thinking about a definite and worthwhile goal is going to reach it because that is what he thinks about. Conversely, a person who has no goals and doesn't know where he's going and has thoughts of fear, anxiety and worry, that is what he manifests. if he thinks about nothing, he becomes nothing.

So why do people not use their brain and think? Why do they not take the time to sit down and write down what they actually want in life? Earl Nightingale also explains the reason behind it.According to him, human beings have got the brain for free and by our very nature, we don't appreciate the things that came for free. We seem to give importance to the things that we paid money for like the house, the television, the computer, etc. But if you look really close, the best things in life come for free. Our mind,imagination, hope, faith, ambition, intelligence, love of family and country, everything comes to us for free. The things that we actually pay money for are in reality, very cheap. They can be wiped out and gained back again in no time. A good man who has the power to control his thoughts and attitude can get back and that even in ten folds in return to what he has lost.

Therefore, we should take the time to understand the biggest kept secret, we are the sum total of our own thoughts. Whatever we think about, we have the power to manifest. So, you also have to chance to be successful as of right now, if you sit down, figure out your main aim in life, be it anything, come up with a game plan and start working on it immediately. One important thing you have to consider is that the only limitations are the ones you put to yourself. Don't be afraid to dream because dreamers of yesterday who had the courage to be laughed at has made our world a better place and we have the same potential that we can pass on to the next generation. WE BECOME WHAT WE THINK ABOUT.

Finally, remember this famous quote :

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."-R.W. Emerson

Thank You

-Manish

01/04/2011

When you Argue for your Limitations, You get to keep them, Does this make you think?

As a Man Thinketh

What role does thoughts play in molding human character?

A man is the sum total of his own thoughts. Whatever thoughts a man holds in his mind for a long period of time, that is what he attracts and ultimately becomes. "As a man thinketh, so is he". Just truly as the simple law of sowing and reaping, the nature of the thoughts you put in your brain determines the output. Human mind is just like an uncultivated land but has enormous potential than that of a land and is extremely mysterious. Just as weeds grow automatically in a barren land, if we do not control the things that we put in our brain, negativity starts to pile up.

Thoughts become things. What we hold in our mind is automatically accepted by our subconscious brain and it starts to act towards its fulfillment.

These thoughts lead to actions.

Actions lead to Habits.

Habits lead to character

& Character is what shapes our destiny.

"Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruits; thus does a man garner in the sweet and bitter fruitage of his own husbandry"(James Allen). From this, you could clearly see that every circumstance that you have in your life can be traced back to the cause-the corresponding thoughts. Every pain and suffering as well as happiness and contentment can be traced back to the similar nature of thoughts that created those emotions or circumstances.  

Thought in the mind hath made us. What we are

By thought we wrought and built. If a man's mind

Hath evil thoughts, pain comes on him as comes

The wheel the ox behind . . . If one endure in purity

of thought joy follows him as his own shadow - sure.

Thoughts are the causes whereas circumstances are the effects of thoughts. So, if you do not like the circumstance that you are in, what should you do? Of course, change your thoughts but I see a lot of people fighting with the circumstances and getting frustated. By common sense, you should be fighting with the cause instead of effect for you cannot change the outcome unless you change the input.

I know its a fight everyday to keep yourself positive. Negative is automatic and every single day, from the time you wake up till the time you hit the pillow, there are going to be tons of negative stuffs that life is going to throw at you. But as long as you keep postivie uplifting thoughts in your mind and not let negativity take you down, you are going to make a difference.

Remember, A positive self-image is a foundation for success in any endeavor. The only way you can develop a positive self-image is by stopping the negative and putting in tons of positive in your brain everyday through reading, listening, praying and association.The day the positive information in your brain outnumbers your negative information, you will start to see the change in your life.

You are the Greatest Miracle that God created. And finally remember, someone's opinion of you does not have to be your reality. It's what you think of yourself that matters.Set out to Achieve your Dreams and work on your goals everyday with a positive mental attitude.

Carpe Diam !!!

-Manish

12/16/2010