Fitness - Rewrite Your Stars

And you can give your body - and yourself - the opportunity by believing in yourself. Believe that you are special. Help yourself and this belief by allowing fitness to sing through you. How many times have your eyes been drawn to the words: Know yourself through your stars?

Ah, how such a headline tickles your curiosity, beckons and seduces you' in its wily clutches! It is irresistible. It is a treasure chest divided into 12 neat compartments to pigeonhole people according to the star signs they were born under. Packaged by cosmic psychologists, they help us poor, miserable human beings to 'know' what we are.

So, an aquarian believes he has a far-sighted understanding of human behaviour and relations. A piscean sees himself as a poet with a musical ear. An arian: creative and spiritual. A taurean: energetic and business ­minded. A geminian: practical and realistic. A cancerian: independent and painstaking. A leon: self assured, a born leader. A virgo: understanding and sympathetic. A scorpion: dignified and reserved. A sagittarian: bold and optimistic. A libran: highly imaginative, avoids arguments.

It's fascinating, isn't it? To delve into oneself and see the image that's been so conveniently built up. But it's self defeating too - in this format. It's isolationist. You pick up all the stray strands and tie yourselves into knots. What you may fail to realise is that if, for example, a capricornian keeps behaving like a capricornian, he will continue to encounter the same problems.

The fact remains that each of us possess all these qualities, and more. It's just that we have allowed only a stream to trickle through instead of that vast waterfall of powerful energy locked into our personality. It's been confirmed by a scientist who reports that the average man uses only twenty percent of his brain power.

But, it's human weakness to underestimate oneself - the result of self ­ignorance which, in this case, is not bliss, but distress. Non-belief in oneself is like slamming a door.

It isn't difficult to sort yourself out. Just sit down for a few minutes and ask yourself: why on earth should I not believe in myself? You will find that there is no reason. It's only you. Your perspective of yourself. Even the most timid, most self-effacing person has gone through one glorious moment when he has experienced a sudden, sharp feeling of happiness, of knowing that he has everything, that he can do anything. Then, it's gone. Why? Because just for that instant, the veil of non-belief lifted and a chink of sunshine peeped through before timidity took over and dropped the veil once again.

The trick is to hold on to this chink of sunshine and allow it to widen, until you are flooded with light. Down the ages, sages have seen 'the light of self-realisation'. But because it doesn't happen to every one of us, it's been packaged as a cosmic experience, a visit from god, etc.

But you need not become a rishi to unlock the sunshine within you. Being fit will automatically do it for you. Exercising and eating right picks up all the loose untidy strands within you and meshes them together to serve you at an optimum level. This sharpens your sense of appreciation of not only the outside world but the limitless potential within you.

Remember, nobody can appreciate you the way you can.

Others only mirror what you project. So, if you are awed by this Goliath world, see yourself as a David. Unconquerable. Standing at the epicentre of the universe, as Dostoievski puts it: "a citizen of eternity". Listen to the words of Dr. Alexis Carrel, a Nobel prize-winning scientist: "Man is made on the scale of the terrestrial mountains, oceans and rivers." It is you he is referring to.

We know of a highly placed executive. Once, he was on drugs - a defeated, hollow shell of a man. But while at a meeting where the discussion ranged from the eternal man, god, life, he suddenly came alive. He told us. "I don't know what it was, but I felt light, as though if i flapped my arms like wings, I would be able to fly!" The veil of non-belief in himself, had indeed, lifted. He has not let it fall back.

It's like a professor of psychology put it: "The average man fails because he does not learn to find and consolidate his powers. For example, the rays of the sun falling upon a piece of paper have little effect. But if they are drawn by the magnifying glass to focus on the paper, they create an intense heat to burn a hole in the paper."

Fitness is the magnifying glass that allows the rays of the sun to pass through it and into you. This way you will recreate you own world. Be in control of yourself, your actions, and in doing so, you'd have rewritten what is in the stars.