Success, the inner game

By Jonah Nyoni | Jul. 6, 2024

Shivani Verma, popularly known as BK Shivani

SUCCESS is more than just the flaunted money, or material things and the external glitters. Success is who we are deep inside. God created us with unique abilities, talents and endowments.

In this column, Jonah Nyoni (JN) engages Shivani Verma (SV), popularly known as BK Shivani, an Indian motivational speaker and the author of the book; The Power of One Thought.

JN: What is your definition of true success.

SV: If you look at the outer world today, success is only compared to achievement and performance. If someone is performing well in what they are doing, it’s called a success.

That is important, but it’s an achievement. So you can call it a performance success for professional success. But success is of the individual. So if our emotional health is perfect, this means happiness and contentment.

If our physical health is good and if our relationships are in harmony and then we are working to our capacity, we may not be number one, because everyone would have their own capacity in terms of talent, scale and performance. But we are still successful, because as an individual, we are successful.

And if we work on our inner self, and we raise our vibrations, we have the power to not just remain stable and powerful, but also to influence others. And that is a leadership quality. For example, a parent is a leader; a parent empowers and influences.

A parent has the power to transform the personality of a child with his or her vibrations. So that is true success, where you can really transform an individual, you can influence an individual to change their destiny, you can empower an individual and that is called emotional success.

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JN: How powerful are our vibrations in attracting the things we want in life, the relationships we want in life and the quality of life that we want?

SV: Vibrations mean that I am a reflection of who I am. So, what I think, what I feel, intentions I carry, whatever is inside me, my thoughts, emotions, intentions, memories, what all I am holding on to is my energy field, that is called an aura. Energy will not remain static as it travels.

So, that is called vibration. So, vibration is all about who I am. So, if someone is egoistic, dominating, controlling and aggressive, it will be their vibration. If someone is contented, humble, caring and compassionate, that can be another vibration.

Vibration is a reflection of our nature or our personality trait. So, I will automatically attract that vibration.

If you are on a vibration of caring, compassionate humility, you will automatically connect with those people.

But if you are on a different vibration of greed, jealousy and domination, you will automatically be drawn towards those kinds of people.

You don’t necessarily choose those people, it’s automatically attracted to you. Your vibrations influence the other person.

If I’m at a lower energy vibration, that influences people around me. If I’m at a higher energy vibration that also influences people around me. Vibrations also radiate to other people.

JN: How do I improve my mind?

SV: That is about taking care of our thoughts, feelings, intentions and memories. We are living in a world where we believe that our thoughts are created by situations.

I’m saying everything that is created in the mind is called emotional dependence. At times we believe we are controlled by the world as if other people have the remote control to my mind.

So this is a low vibration way of living, where I’m blaming the world for how I’m feeling. So, the first step is to start taking personal responsibility for your emotions.

I understand what the other person did was not right, but if I create my anger, I am responsible. Just reflect and say “I could have done this another way, I could have spoken to them with calm and stability”.

The mental health issues are on the rise and these include compression, anxiety and panic attack. So we should take care of our emotional health, then we will be able to face situations in our life.

Content or information is like a diet. It is an emotional diet. So what I watch, read, listen will shape the quality of my thoughts. Now in the last 20 years, content has suddenly increased in our life.

That content has a lot of ego, greed, violence, terrorism and comedy. That content is ridiculing people or pulling people down.

That content is also seeking public approval by how many people liked what I posted and a very different set of emotions has started getting created for the last 20 years.

We can see a difference that it has brought about in children and the youth, because they start consuming it at a very tender age. We have to take care of the quality of the content we consume.

We have to be very careful about what I consume in the night before going to sleep. What I consume before I sleep works on my mind and body during my six, seven hours of sleep because it goes into the subconscious.

So, the last hour before going to sleep and the first hour when we wake up in the morning are very crucial. Be careful of what you consume before you sleep and what you consume when you wake up.

Use these two times for at least 15 minutes at night or in the morning, consuming positive content that will improve contentment, peace, forgiveness, unity and respect.

JN: I want you to emphasise on the power of the subconscious mind; how it drives our lives, how it shifts our thinking? So, what is the power of the subconscious mind and how does it feed into the conscious mind?

SV: If I create a thought, it is the conscious mind. Then I take a decision and I bring it into action. Next time, I then create the same thought, it is the conscious mind. I bring it into action. If I create that same pattern repeatedly, it becomes my personality trait and that will go into my subconscious mind.

That means now I don’t need to create a thought, It has become my habit. It will come out automatically, so that what has gone into the subconscious mind is actually controlling our life.

It’s like the first time you choose should I drink tea? Should I drink coffee? Should I drink milk? Should I drink coconut water? The mind is choosing using the conscious mind. After you have had coffee many times, you stop choosing because it has now become a habit.

Once it becomes a habit, we don’t choose. So let’s say anger is my habit, it has gone into the subconscious. I don’t feel today that I chose anger, it happened automatically because it is in the subconscious. But now I realise it’s not good for me. So now I changed my thinking.

That new thought will eventually be hardwired into habit. Once we bring it into action, next time it will come into action.

And gradually after a few days, a few months of responding peacefully it will become my habit and then that will go into the subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind is very powerful. Just before going to sleep and just when we wake up, the subconscious mind works. So that’s why we should be very careful about what we consume and think about all the time.

This also applies to the moments just before going to sleep and just after waking up in the morning.

So in the night before going to sleep, ensure you have positive content, positive affirmations, write your thoughts and positive affirmations and repeatedly say them before sleeping.

JN: So Tony Robbins says “where focus goes, energy flows.” How do we then focus on minds so that we want? We have TV, social media and our friends all screaming for our attention, but how do we focus so that we reach my goals and dreams?

SV: Dedicate a few minutes to yourself. Spending time with yourself spirituality plays a very important role. You can call it different words, your silence time, meditation, reflection, or contemplation, but they embody the same principles.

Just spend some time with yourself. Sit in silence, don’t allow your mind to always be entangled with some object or talking to people.

And when you sit down with yourself, you are starting to create a relationship with yourself, you are able to see the clutter going on here and then when you are able to see the clutter.

It’s like this cupboard here. If I never open it, I will never know what’s happening inside the cupboard. Maybe it’s rotting. Maybe there are termites. But I will never know because I never opened it. I won’t even know what all I’m dumping into it throughout the day.

If I don’t keep cleaning, then there will be so much clutter that I cannot focus. Concentration requires a silent mind. Distraction is very easy.

For me, the most important thing is self-care. So contemplation, sitting in silence and meditation are the most powerful things to create concentration.

JN: There’s an emphasis on personal development. How important is personal development? What is personal development? How do I develop myself? What are the everyday techniques that I can pick on, so that I develop myself as an individual?

SV: In the world, when we talk of personality development, it’s very outwardly. So people are teaching how to speak, body language, how to communicate, how to walk, and how to eat. So that’s a very physical thing.

With personality, which means “I the person”, it does not mean my body, it means “I the person”. So for us, personality development is more of my nature, my emotional patterns, my ways of thinking, feeling and we believe that what I am as a person will automatically come out in what I speak and will automatically change my body language.

So I don’t need to take care of what to speak, I just need to take care of what I think. So taking care of the person also means the energy in me is the master of this body which we call the spirit or the soul.

JN: What is your favourite quotable quote?

SV: Put the remote control of your mind in your own hand and then happiness, health, harmony and success is what you get.