The idea of human cognitive superiority is weakening due to lot of studies being conducted by scientists. Professor Maciej Henneberg, a professor of anthropological and comparative anatomy from the School of Medical Sciences, at the University of Adelaide, says animals often possess different abilities that are misunderstood by humans. He says that animals do not understand us, and we do not understand them, this does not mean our ‘intelligences’ are at different levels; they are just of different kinds. We often misinterpret a foreigner when he tries to communicate with us using an imperfect, broken, version of our language. We think he is not intelligent. Similarly, we underestimate the animal intelligence because of lack of language and technology. But, they are far more intelligent than us.

Some mammals, like gibbons, can produce a large number of varied sounds, over 20 different sounds with clearly different meanings that allow these arboreal primates to communicate across tropical forest canopy. The fact that they do not build houses is because they are irrelevant to the gibbons. Many quadrupeds (four feet animal) leave complex olfactory (sense of smell) marks in their environment, and some, like koalas, have special pectoral glands for scent marking. Humans, with their limited sense of smell, cannot even determine the complexity of messages contained in olfactory markings, which may be as rich in information as the visual world, says Maciej Henneberg. He also says that domestic pets also give us an insight into mental abilities of mammals and birds. They communicate to us their happiness, sadness and demands and make us do things they want from us. Thus, the animal world is much more complex than we give it credit for.

Have the grit to stand up after a fall: Take the example of the birth of a baby giraffe; it is quite horrific event. The baby falls from its mother’s womb, some eight feet above the ground. It droops and shrivels up and lies still, due to its weakness to move. The mother giraffe lovingly lowers her neck to smooch the baby giraffe. Then a miracle happens…..she lifts her long leg and kicks the baby giraffe, sending it flying up in the air and falling down on the ground. As the baby lies curled up, the mother kicks the baby again and again, until the baby giraffe which trembles and pushes its limbs and first time learns to stand on its feet. Happy to see the baby standing on its own feet, the mother giraffe comes over and gives it yet another kick. The baby giraffe falls one more time, but now quickly recovers and stands up. Mama Giraffe is happy. She knows that her baby has learnt an important lesson of standing on its own feet. Why does the mother giraffe do this? She knows that lions and leopards love giraffe meat. So unless the baby giraffe quickly learns to stand and run with the pack, it has very little chances of survival.

Follow your nose: Lions don’t stop searching until they find their prey. Their smelling sense is very strong. Like all cats they possess a special olfactory organ on the roof of the mouth called a Jacobson’s organ. Lions have pride, they find their own food. The king of animals takes lots of rest; he maintains his majesty by rejuvenating his energy after a good sleep.  He roars making his command on the rest of kingdom figuratively. It is one of the loudest calls in the animal kingdom and can be heard from up to 8km away. …Lions roar to tell other lions where they are, to show how big they are and to warn lions from other groups  to keep away from their home territory.

Follow your own path: It seems horses tend to live pretty independently, and often stray from the pack whenever they feel like exploring one of their own. While they have a majestic, fantastic appearance, they also have a fierce, stubborn side that takes them into unexplored territory and allows them to pave their own path. Be like the horse and run freely into the wind devoid of worries and too much of thinking of what the consequences might be. Horses teach us the lesson to follow our dreams; get out of the herd mentality. Take a road which is not very familiar. Follow your gut feeling, than taking thousand of advises.

Listen more talk less: Dolphins actually communicate with one another via high-pitched whistling noises, and each one makes a unique sound that other dolphins can immediately recognize. It is hard to believe that each dolphin has a unique whistle called a ‘signature whistle’, which is used to recognize an individual. They have very advanced communication techniques; in a way they listen more and talk less. They keenly listen to the whistling of each other in order to understand each other’s location in the vast big ocean. If they all whistled at once, none of them would be able to find one another. They have honed their listening skills in order to function well as a group. We humans should specially learn from dolphins that listening to another person is the most important life skill.

Get back to your sweet home: It seems when a rabbit gets startled, he bolts from his hiding place and takes off running. It looks like he’s running away, but eventually, that rabbit will run in a circle and come back to his hideout. The rabbit does this because he’s returning to the last place he felt safe. After all the running around, we do in our life we prefer getting back to our homes. It’s the safest place for us and it helps us build back our energies.

Unity has strength: Ants, in particular, are an excellent example of this in action. They carry tiny small particles of dirt underground to form complex tunnels and living systems, tackle prey as a team, and help each other carry leaves back to their colony to use as mulch for raising fungus, which they eat to survive. They work harder than many species just to get through each day, and they do it as a team. No one gets left behind, and no one carries all the weight. They are united while working, no one works more or no one works less.

Elephant’s memory: The wild animal is famous for its memory which is most important for their survival and their herd. Each herd has a matriarchal structure, with one older female in charge. There is proof of elephants’ long memories: when confronted with an unfamiliar elephant, matriarchs huddles defensive position, because they realize that those elephants could pose a threat to the herd’s safety. Elephants can keep track of up to 30 absent members of their family by sniffing out their scent and building a mental map of where they are. One research has also proved that elephants can tell whether a human is friendly or a threat by their scent and colour of clothing.

Even chimpanzees can easily beat humans at recalling a set of numbers that was displayed for a fraction of a second.

Darwin has said that animals have emotions such as excitement, sadness, compassion, love, they have theory moods too. He went on to say that there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties. We are not superior to animals.

Change is simply inevitable. Change is something that will happen no matter how hard we try to stop it. Change is a part of the world we live in. Day turns into night and night into new day. Sun rises and sets. Seasons change. A new born slowly starts maturing. With every passing moment, events change. And most of these events cannot be predicted. Sometimes, the changes that take place in our lives are slow, and sometimes even anticipated. While other times, the changes are immediate and sudden. Abrupt changes can throw us into a place of fear and uncertainty.

Both abrupt and anticipated changes make us anxious. Moreover, changes whether anticipated or unanticipated don’t always produce an outcome that we favor; for instance, a couple might date for 10 years, get married and soon their relation becomes wobbly. The couple might have had anticipated good time in the 10 years dating, but things end in bad taste. In another example, a student hardly prepares for a competitive exam; he gives the exam for the heck of it but passes it! So, the point is we hardly have any control on events taking place in our life.

Rational Emotive Therapy (RET) was first developed by Albert Ellis (American Psychologist) in the 1950s. Although Ellis had initially done work in the field of Behaviorism, later became convinced of the causal nature of cognitive (conscious intellectual thinking) processes. He went on and developed a model of behavior that involves a continuous relationship between environmental factors and the internal mental state of human mind. According to Ellis, a person’s cognitive process determines according to his expectations from life, and the way he interacts with life. A happy person will interact happily with others, while a depressed person might interact with a weighed down attitude with others.

For Ellis, the alphabets ABC offered insights into how to overcome self-defeated behaviors and cognition. The “A” here stands for activating events in life. It includes of all good, bad and the ugly events in life. The everyday obstacles and difficulties that everyone is forced to deal with just as a consequence of interacting with the world. The “B” stands for our belief system. It is our belief system which leads us to think positive in an adverse situation to overcome the hardship. The “C” represents the consequences that arise as a result of our belief. Negative beliefs underpin and contribute to negative outcomes, and that having positive beliefs about confronting adversity naturally lead to good results.

From the moment one comes into the world, begins to develop his/her belief system. A person’s belief system forms on all rational and irrational inputs which go into him. As a child one does not have a well formed capacity for logical inference therefore developing one’s belief system is not necessarily rational process. It is rather a process based upon one’s experience in the world. As a person matures, his abilities develop and his understandings expand. He starts gathering information and he gathers evidence for making decisions. His belief system also depends a lot on his traditional background. He makes or breaks dogmas depending on how authoritative he is. On the other hand, if a person is vulnerable and a follower of some bossy associates in life, his associations matter a lot.  Cheerful and positive associations make us happy, negative associations make us sadder and nagger. Revelations are equally important in our life in constructing our belief system. Revelation has the power to unmask things and it can unfold many mysteries in life. Revelation is divinity. Wisdom helps us to live healthier life.

“C” is consequences. They are result or effect, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant. They also mean an act or instance of following an act. Consequence is a result or an outcome.

 People have slaughtered each other in wars, people have gone length into investigations which sometimes are twisted and turned as per demand of time. Irrational politics in the world has created havoc leaving the rationality far behind. Bad political actions for centuries have been based on racism, religion and dogmas. See how powerful beliefs are. They are so overly powerful that they can make or break global systems. I want to quote here yesterday, on 7^th Jan 2015 how some brilliant cartoonists in France were killed by some fundamentalists.

Belief in religion makes people so blind that yesterday’s news of hooded gunmen killing cartoonists with pen names Charb, Wolinski, Cabu, Tignous and Honore who were famous for expressing their feelings towards all forms of authority with the world’s spiky, no-holds-barred political cartoons. Religion can make us so blind. These cartoonists’s irreverence has cost them their lives. They were most revered and controversial cartoonists in France. And why were these intelligent and fearless cartoonists shot? It’s because they drew caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and other controversial sketches which raged feelings of Islamic community. See how our beliefs can mar our logic very easily.

Throughout history, humankind has paid reverence to beliefs and mystical thinking. Organized religion has played the most significant role in the support and propagation of beliefs and faith. This has resulted in an acceptance of beliefs in general; regardless of how one may reject religion, religious support of supernatural events gives credibility to other superstitions in general and the support of faith, belief without evidence, mysticism, and miracles. Most scientists, politicians, philosophers, and even atheists support the notion that some forms of belief provide a valuable means to establish “truth” as long as it contains the backing of data and facts. Belief has long become a socially acceptable form of thinking in science as well as religion.

It is therefore very important to change, to twist our old and trodden belief system and design a healthy and empowering system. However, it is interesting to note that rational thinking requires the adherence to beliefs.

Artificial beliefs and memories can affect people’s attitudes, at least in the short term. One gets to choose his beliefs. One also get to choose the actions that he chooses to take but sorry nobody gets to choose the consequences of his beliefs. According Rational Emotive Therapy, people contribute to their own psychological problems by the way they interpret events and situations. However, every human is empowered to change his belief system. Irrational beliefs in our life only trouble us and do not help us. One can learn skills to get over the disputing irrational thinking.

At any point in life, it is worth to spend some time and focus on self-interest, self-direction, and tolerance of self and others, flexibility, self-acceptance, and scientific thinking. It is always better to adopt this type of balanced thinking which helps in experiencing a minimum of emotional disturbance. Albert Ellis said that all psychological problems stem from the way people think about things. The core of much psychological trouble comes because of irrational ideas that are self-defeating.

So friends, the beliefs you have about yourself can drive your long-term behavior. Maybe you can trick yourself into taking some important decisions that requires your basic behavior. But, if you don’t shift your underlying identity, then it’s hard to stick with long-term changes. The root of behavior change and building better habits is your uniqueness. Each action you perform is driven by the fundamental belief that it is possible. So if you change your identity – the type of person that you believe that you are, then it’s easier to change your actions. You are the carver of your destiny.