What mind is and where it is situated has been debated for centuries. Rarely two philosophers agree on one definition or location for mind.

Rene Descartes, French philosopher, scientist and mathematician, said that there is a total and absolute distinction between mental and material substance and that mind is situated in pineal gland. Endocrinologist Ernest Gelhorn thinks that mind is an activity of entire nervous system. Hughlings Jackson, a neurologist, thinks that consciousness and mind are same, whereas Percival Bailey, director of Psychiatric Research Institute, disagrees.

I believe mind is nonmaterial and cannot become part of a material brain, pineal gland or amygdala. We can go through every nerve cell, analyse it electrochemically, spectroscopically, mass-photographically, electronically, and, using all known tests, we will not find any indication of mind. There is no single location for mind. The human mind is distributed throughout human body and its environment. Every cell has its own mind and has ability to function independently or jointly with all cells of body.

For example, a neuron is capable of deciding whether it will transmit information to another nerve cell and, if it will, to which of thousands of cells it is in contact. Similarly, endocrine cells decide whether they will respond to a demand for a particular enzyme by cells in another far corner of body.

Even sponge cells exhibit a similar capacity of awareness. When a piece of sponge is ground up and individual cells are suspended in solution, they will come together and become a complete sponge within a few hours. This indicates that each cell has a mind of its own to decide to combine with another sponge cell.

Just as each of thousand pieces of a splintered mirror will show same reflection of an object as whole mirror, each cell reflects our mind and each cell in universe reflects universal mind. To use another analogy, mind is current that makes every cell work like electrical current that makes radio operate. _________________________________________________________________________

Resource Box: Universal Mind Copyright 2003. by Dr. P.C. Simon, a retired research microbiologist, philosopher, philanthropist and author. Also by Dr. P.C. Simon, informative, inspiring, and life-changing book, The Missing Piece to Paradise. More articles by Dr. Simon and a description of his book can be seen at http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/psimon/book2.htm

2.If you don’t over-extend importance of event and predict negatively into future, i.e., “my vacations are always lousy.”

3.If you don’t bring in other things that aren’t relevant, i.e., “I can’t plan a vacation or do anything right.”

4.Find things to enjoy despite things that were disappointments. It’s a rare ANYTHING that’s 100% good OR bad.

Your expectation for perfection can make you miserable, and whatever you’re doing, it’s for sure your intent isn’t to feel miserable. When you have unrealistic expectations, you compound your problem, because in dealing with one problem, you create a worse one. It’s bad enough not to get job, without blaming yourself, feeling devastated, and considering it part of a hopeless pattern of bad luck, incompetence, victim-ness, or your global ability to handle things.

Suit up, play game best you can, shower and go home. This means managing emotions around all of these steps. Getting what you want is important. It’s nice. It’s certainly preferable. But if you don’t get it, it isn’t end of world.

Resilience means being able to bounce back from disappointments, retaining your faith in yourself and hopes for future. Understand flow of things. Sometimes you’ll succeed, sometimes you’ll fail, and sometimes in retrospect, it will be hard to tell difference.

About success and failure, Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is courage to continue that counts,” and “Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.”

So keep your enthusiasm by managing your expectations and using your emotional intelligence.

Lastly, one of best things you can learn is to enjoy preparation. It’s one thing you can count on. I have one client who plans trips she doesn’t even take, because it’s so much fun. Another who purposely takes speaking engagements on topics she doesn’t yet have material on, so that she can learn and master something new in preparation.

If you have thoroughly enjoyed preparation, then you have an extra part to whole package that’s under your control that can meet your expectations.

TAKE WITH YOU POINTS

Do how do you manage these disappointments?

1.Develop your emotional intelligence so you can manage your expectations and keep them realistic and manage your reactions to them.

2.Remain optimistic and resilient no matter what outcomes.

3.Consider that in long run it may turn out to have been a good thing.

4.Learn to enjoy journey as well as destination, because they are two different things.

5.If you’re going to play, enjoy game!