All stress and depression starts with one Negative thought, which goes unchecked and becomes a reality in the mind. Repeat negative thinking makes the negativity like an unmovable mountain in the head, in the end leading to depression & other psychological/health issues.
So how to deal with it??

If you get any negative thought, first of all check its reality. Is it giving you a signal for behavioural change? then go for it. Change your course of action, till you become satisfied.If its just phoney, then change your perception and look for the positive alternative.
Practice this Mental Exercise for 1 week and see the phenomenal changes in your life!!!
Feel free to share your experiences.

Beliefs are you convictions, which are a result of your experiences, traditions or as told by your elders/parents. But do you know, once upon a time, which is considered a belief, after sometime it ceases to exist when something contrary to that ‘belief’ takes place. Lets’ take a real example of ‘Belief’ disproven. It was previously believed that running a mile under 4 minutes was humanly impossible. But on May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute barrier, running the distance in 3:59.4.
Barely a year after Bannister’s accomplishment, someone else ran a mile in under 4 minutes. Then some more runners did. Now, it’s almost routine. Even strong high-schoolers today run 4-minute miles. Similar is the case of our lives. Sometimes we hold on to beliefs which are totally debilitating our growth. And these are known as ‘Limiting Beliefs’. They Limit our thinking,growth & development in life.
In NLP we say that there is no such thing as ‘I can’t do it’, its only ‘I don’t want to do it.’ When you say ‘I can’t do it’ its just a limiting belief.

Let me give you my own example of overcoming Limiting Belief.
Before 2006, I used to firmly believe that I will never be able to do public speaking. If somebody told me that I have to speak for only 5 min in a particular event, I would have sleepless nights many days before the event. Then finally one day I decided that, if so many people out there do public speaking, then why can’t I? And I started to visualize myself giving public talks & also started practicing alone in a closed room. Until when I could finally break my limiting beliefs.
And Alhamdulillah now I have given more than 100s of public talks, and can easily give seminars & presentations in front for an audience of any size.

Action Item: Analyze what are the Limiting Beliefs in your life, which are hampering your growth and over come them using the Power of visualization.
The Thumb Rule to analyze a limiting belief is: “Any action which you want/love to do, but you think, you cannot.”
To overcome it, you need think/visulize what you want to do in your life, till it starts manifesting itself as a reality. God willing.

Please share your experience of overcoming your Limiting Beliefs.

Note: The Beliefs which I am talking here are not the Religious Beliefs, which is a personal choice.

A few days back I was discussing with one of my friends in Dubai, a fresher working for a small Construction company. During the discussion he told me, that he is doing mechanical design work for the company. And while the conversation was on, he told me that he is going to submit his designs to the Dubai Municipality & once they approve it his Self-Confidence will increase!!
I immediately asked him, why does he wants to keep his Self-confidence in the hands of Dubai Municipality??

Which indirectly means he is not confident as of now, while working on the designs.!! How about having self-confidence in advance & then doing the design work. Will there not be a higher probability of getting approved by Dubai Municipality if he already works with the advance confidence???

How many of us attach our confidence, happiness, peace to certain material things, events or other people. Many people say if I get a certain amount of salary I will happy! And once they get that salary, they will attach their happiness to something else.
The question is who is stopping you to be happy & confident RIGHT NOW??

Before I explain the Psycho-Cybernetic Mechanism, let me first explain the Cybernetic Mechanism that we find in machines and some animals. This mechanism is simply, a control and response mechanism. We use it everywhere today, in our air conditioners, auto-pilots, etc. Cybernetic Mechanism is designed to monitor a certain parameters and take corrective action to correct any deviation. Air conditioners now have climate control and are able to maintain a set temperature by adjusting the settings of the air conditioner to compensate for any other influences that affect the temperature. The air conditioner will activate and deactivate to maintain the set temperature because of the cybernetic mechanism. Auto-pilot technology in aircraft, also make use of cybernetic mechanisms.
Psycho-Cybernetic Mechanism monitors what we refer to as your comfort zone. Psycho- Cybernetic Mechanism is in charge to keep you in your comfort zone, no matter how badly you want to change. When it picks up any deviation from your comfort zone it sends feedback to your nervous system which then tries to “correct” the deviation by creating emotional stimulus to bring you back into your comfort zone.
A sales person who works on a commission based salary can decide to earn double than what he did a previous month. Logically it would require longer working hours, twice as many calls and probably some other sacrifices. In return, after a week or so, his income would be higher in comparison to the previous month’s first week. At this point his Psycho-Cybernetic Mechanism would kick in and send neural-transmitters to cause doubts, fear and anxiety. It will cause him to rationalize things. Please bear in mind, this happens automatically and so fast that you have no idea that it’s happening at all. It will start justifying old behavior. You might find it perfectly reasonable to take a break since you have worked so hard. It will literally find a dozen excuses why you should relax a bit and slow down. All this is to bring you back to your old comfort zone. It doesn’t know if you are happy or unhappy in your comfort zone. It’s job is simply to keep bringing you back into your comfort zone.
This is a very critical point. Without resetting this system – nothing will change! This system causes you to consistently behave the way you do and will continue to keep bringing you back.
Virginia Satir said: “familiarity is the most powerful force in human beings”. The opposite of familiarity is the unknown. Yet when you were a child, almost everything was unknown. Yet as a child, each day brought new exploration and a new set of possibilities. When you learned to walk, you kept going even if you fell, got back up each time over and over. You kept doing this because of your unshakable desire and belief that you will walk.
Will you Reset your Psycho-Cybernetic Mechanism Now??

A few days ago when I woke up for Fajr prayer, I saw my wife awake & was shivering with cold. Donno what she saw in her dream smile emoticon Anyways she told me that she is feeling cold and told me to cover her with a blanket. I was running short of time for my Fajr prayer & felt a bit lazy to put the blanket on her. With my eyes half-closed, as I had just got up, it stuck to me why not use my NLP techniques.

I told her to just keep on saying ‘Hot’, ‘Hot’ continuously, knowing very well that what you say, your mind will process it. And what the mind processes the body will react. She found this a bit silly, but still did what I told her. Then I told her to close her eyes and visualize herself in our last years’ Umrah trip, during zuhr time, when the heat was at its peak, and we were fasting & making our rounds of the Kaba….

No sooner she started to visualize the above scene, while saying verbally Hot, Hot,… the shivering vanished in an instant and she was totally relaxed and normal. It was so powerful & dramatic that even I was amazed. It made the conviction so firm, that it’s the ‘Scenes’ which you play in your mind are more important than, even you actually presence anywhere.
Your body reacts to your scenes in the mind, not your actual presence!!